Sheehan and colleagues5 described a case of intramedullary spinal cysticercosis in a 16-year-old American woman who traveled to Mexico 10 years before the presentation. This patient lived just outside Washington, DC. She adhered to a Kosher diet and denied consuming pork. For our patient, we analyzed cox1 gene of mtDNA for the identification of the haplotype of the unstained histopathological specimens.1 The cox1 sequence data revealed that it was completely the same as the haplotype of Korea and China1 in Asian genotype.6 Since this patient has never visited Korea and China and the haplotype of T solium in Thailand differs from Korea and China, so far as we know it is most likely that she acquired the infection in Laos during

Vemurafenib order one of her previous trips. It suggests that the haplotype of Korea and China may be distributed widely in Asia including Laos. It is unlikely that she acquired the spinal cysticercosis during her most recent trip, because the symptoms had begun before her recent trip and the parasite had already degenerated into the tissue specimen.

Probably, she had a chronic infection that became progressively symptomatic prompting her recent presentation to the hospital. This approach to use unstained pathological specimens can become a powerful tool to assess where the patient became infected, especially in the case of patients who traveled to multiple endemic countries or who had never visited such regions but got accidental infections in developed countries from some others who were either visitors from selleck compound endemic areas or residents after traveling to such endemic areas.1,7,8 NCC can be divided into GKT137831 purchase parenchymal, leptomeningeal, intraventricular, and spinal cysticercosis according to the location of involvement.9 Most often the brain is affected and is involved in 60% to 92% of all patients with cysticercosis.10 Spinal NCC is rare compared with intracranial NCC involving the brain, basal cisterns, and ventricles. In 1963, Canelas and colleagues11 reported a 2.7% incidence of spinal NCC in 296 cases of NCC. Since that

time, others have suggested that the incidence of spinal NCC is up to 5%;5 however, an incidence of <1% to 3% is most often reported among more recent case series.3,12 A differential diagnosis of the spinal cystic lesions includes spinal tumors, epidermoid tumors, echinococcosis, arachnoid/colloid cysts, and meningoceles. Accurate diagnosis of NCC is based on neuroimaging studies, laboratory analysis of the cerebrospinal fluid, and antibody detection in the serum. A set of diagnostic criteria has been proposed to help clinicians and health workers with the diagnosis of NCC.13 One of the absolute or gold standard criteria for the diagnosis of NCC is histological demonstration of the parasite in biopsy or operation material. Histologically, encystment of cysticercus larva is seen. The cyst is comprised of the outer layer, covered by hair-like projections.