[Muscular hypertrophy in clinical neurology (author's transl)]

The authors begin this general review with the pseudohypertrophies due either to an underlying extramuscular process, or to a focal lesion within the muscle, or else to miscellaneous interstitial infiltrates such as those found in cysticercosis, sarcoidosis, amylosis. True hypertrophy is most often observed in the course of muscular dystrophy. It is an usual finding in myopathies, and the prominent symptom of Thomsen disease ; it is the only symptom of hypertrophia musculorum vera and masseters hypertrophy ; it is associated with a peculiar deficit in the "Hereditary Distal Myopathy with Onset in Infancy"; it is a classical symptom of some endocrine myopathies (hypothyroidism and acromegaly). Paradoxically, true hypertrophy may, though very rarely, be encountered in the course of nervous system diseases, most often of the neuritic type : sciatica, hypertrophic neuritis, progressive spinal muscular atrophy. The mechanism of this very unusual muscular reaction remains unknown.