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Michael P. McQuillen, MD; Kenneth Tucker, MD; Edmund D. Pellegrino, MD

Arch Neurol. 1967;16(2):165-174.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

THE OCCURRENCE of "progressive muscular tautness" was termed the "stiff-man" syndrome by Moersch and Woltman in 1956.¹ Once hysteria or extrapyramidal disease are eliminated from consideration, there remains a group of patients with striking axial stiffness, sometimes with superimposed muscle spasms, in whom no apparent pathology can be found. Exacting clinical, metabolic, and electromyographic (EMG) criteria for this diagnosis were set forth in 1964.² As a result a number of clinically similar conditions were excluded.

Olafson et al in 1964² suggested that this disorder might arise because of a disturbance in spinal reflex mechanisms. They advanced this hypothesis because of similarities between the stiff-man syndrome and disorders such as tetanus, in which there is good theoretical, physiological, and anatomical evidence for interference with the normal reflex inhibitors of anterior horn cell activity. Because of certain clinical observations, Allsop argued in 1963³ that the spinal reflex disturbance . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Lexington, Ky

From the departments of neurology and medicine, University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington.

Footnotes
Submitted for publication July 16, 1966; accepted Nov 2.

Read before the 91st Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association, Washington, DC, June 13-15, 1966.

Reprint requests to Department of Neurology, University of Kentucky Medical Center, Lexington, Ky 40506 (Dr. McQuillen).

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