Chronic encephalomyelitis presenting as chronic progressive myelopathy.

Chronic progressive myelopathy is a clinical entity with few neuropathological studies. The most frequent diagnosis in necropsied cases is multiple sclerosis. A case of chronic progressive myelopathy is described with a 16-year course in a woman who was 28 years old at the onset of the disease. At necropsy, there was chronic inflammation in the central nervous system with predominant involvement of the spinal cord with diffuse myelin loss and axonal degeneration.