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R. R. Young, MD
Laboratory of Clinical Neurophysiology Massachusetts General Hospital Boston, MA 02114

Arch Neurol. 1977;34(11):722.

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

To the Editor.—

Sachais and colleagues (Arch Neurol 34:422, 1977) reported on the "antispastic" effects of baclofen. Though many of the facts derived from our evaluations of baclofen^1.2 are similar to those reported by Sachais and collaborators, I disagree fundamentally about the utility of catch-all words such as "spasticity" in discussions of either pathophysiological details or the response to drugs of one or other of these elements of pathophysiology. If one lumps together all the positive or negative signs and symptoms presented by paretic patients under one heading such as "spasticity," it is difficult to differentiate the actions of drugs such as dantrolene (which produces a purely peripheral effect on excitation-contraction coupling in muscle fibers) from those of drugs like baclofen (which acts within the CNS to alter various abnormally reactive reflexes, particularly those for which cutaneous stimulation is the adequate input). More importantly, from the viewpoint of a pharmaceutical . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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