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William T. Beaver, MD

JAMA. 1984;251(13):1732-1733.

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

Laska and co-workers¹ have mustered impressive new evidence for the efficacy of caffeine as an analgesic adjuvant while simultaneously providing an example of how results from a number of controlled clinical trials, the majority of which do not individually meet the usually accepted levels of statistical significance for verifying a drug effect, may be combined to provide substantial evidence of drug efficacy. Caffeine has long been a constituent of both over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription analgesic combinations in conjunction with aspirin, acetaminophen, phenacetin, and salicylamide. However, critiques have repeatedly noted that the then-available evidence for caffeine's contribution to the efficacy of such combinations was tenuous at best.^2-5

The major problem in demonstrating caffeine's contribution is the limited assay sensitivity of controlled clinical trials used to evaluate mild analgesics and their combinations.³ Because of the multiplicity of known and unknown variables that affect the course of a patient's pain . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Georgetown University Schools of Medicine and Dentistry Washington, DC

Footnotes
Address editorial communications to the Editor, 535 N Dearborn St, Chicago, IL 60610.

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