Investigation for pathogenesis of syringomyelia with Chiari I malformation

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Syringomyelia has been considered as a rare and difficult disease to treat. Recent development of diagnostic imageing modality and microsurgical techniques, however, enabled us to find and surgically treat more numbers of patients in a less-invasive and safe manner.Etiology of syringomyelia has been controversial, although several pathogenesis has been proposed. Although we do not have an animalmodel of syringomyelia associated with Chiari malformation, we are performing the pathological analysis in the rat model, in which tonsilar herniation was mimiced with the obstruction of foramen magnum and upper cervical spinal cannal with a balloon catheter.In those rats with tonsillar herniation, the spinal cord from the C5 to the T8 segments showed enlargement of the central canal. Histological examination revealed the stretching and thinning of the ependymal cells, swelling of the astrocytic process, and extra-cellular edema, predominantly in the dorsal gray matter and also inner portion of the dorsal column. These findings strongly suggest our model can show an early evolutionary change of syringomyelia.