Correspondence Dose-related sleep disturbances induced by coffee and caffeine
To the Editor: Karacan and co-workers, in their article entitled "Dose-related sleep disturbances induced by coffee and caffeine," which appeared on pages 682-689 of the December, 1976, issue of the JOURNAL, state their belief that "subjective assessments . . . should form a standard component of studies that investigate the effects of drugs on sleep." It is especially delightful to read remarks of this sort from people who work in a sleep laboratory, because many of us have thought for a long time now that the electroencephalogram has been a bit oversold as a way of
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evaluating sleep. What is confusing, however, is the authors' apparent lack of familiarity with over two decades of published material on the effects of drugs on sleep which has utilized subjective assessments of the sort they endorse. It is, to be sure, increasingly tedious to review the world literature, but it should not be ignored. Louis Lasagna, M.D. Department of Pharmaco!ogy and Toxico!ogy University of Rochester Schoo! of Medicine and Dentistry Rochester, N. Y. 14642
To the Editor: Karacan and co-workers, in their article entitled "Dose-related sleep disturbances induced by coffee and caffeine," which appeared on pages 682-689 of the December, 1976, issue of the JOURNAL, state their belief that "subjective assessments . . . should form a standard component of studies that investigate the effects of drugs on sleep." It is especially delightful to read remarks of this sort from people who work in a sleep laboratory, because many of us have thought for a long time now that the electroencephalogram has been a bit oversold as a way of
244
evaluating sleep. What is confusing, however, is the authors' apparent lack of familiarity with over two decades of published material on the effects of drugs on sleep which has utilized subjective assessments of the sort they endorse. It is, to be sure, increasingly tedious to review the world literature, but it should not be ignored. Louis Lasagna, M.D. Department of Pharmaco!ogy and Toxico!ogy University of Rochester Schoo! of Medicine and Dentistry Rochester, N. Y. 14642
