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In the present review the results of the main epidemiologic studies on cerebral gliomas are reported. Various characteristics of patients, i.e. endogenous factors including age, sex, familiarity and constitutional factors, and exogenous factors including perinatal and infectious diseases, trauma and geographic and environmental findings, are considered in turn.

Spinal tumors are not very frequent; they represent 8-15% of the tumors of the central nervous system. In adulthood, more than a half of them are intradural extramedullary tumors; the most frequent oncotype is neurinoma, followed by meningioma. The frequency of astrocytomas of the spine is comparable with that of the brain, taking into account the different weights of the two organs; on the contrary, the frequency of ependymomas is higher than in the brain. In childhood, spinal tumors are quite infrequent . Some oncotypes are typical of infancy: neuroblastoma, teratoma, sarcoma. The pathological peculiarities of some oncotypes due to the spinal location are discussed.

The nervous system is the most common site for the development of solid neoplasms in children. The most frequent oncotype is the pilocytic astrocytoma, followed by the medulloblastoma. Primitive undifferentiated neuroectodermal tumors occur primarily in childhood; problems of pathogenesis of these neoplasms are discussed, as well as their relationship with central nervous system development.