I read earlier this week of another Botox ‘concern’ this week on the internet which reported ‘Botox moves from the face to the brain’. This news story was based on a recently published paper in the Journal of Neuroscience. The concern is that Botox apparently can migrate from where it is injected to somewhere in the brain, suggesting that this may be potentially harmful. At the least, it sounds harmful anyway.
Doing my due diligence, I decided to read the article for myself as undoubtably patients will ask me about it. The article is officially titled ‘Long-Distance Retrograde Effects of Botulinum Neurotoxin A’ authored by an team of scientists at the Neuroscience Institute in Padova, Italy. It was published in the Journal of Neuroscience on April 2, 2008. In this study, botulinum toxin A was injected into rats either into various areas of the brain or into its whisker facial muscles. The most potentially relevant injection site for cosmetic purposes is the facial muscle site. They found that some of the botulinum enzyme remnants were later found at the facial nucleus site in the brain. Thus, confirming the novel finding that botulinum toxin has the ability to move ffrom the nerve endings in the face to the brain…..at least in rats.
What does this mean to the cosmetic patient who regularly gets Botox injections? Not much in my opinion. First, this was a study performed in rats, so it does not mean it works the same way in humans. Secondly, the study did not show any harmful effects to the rat despite this finding. Third, the type of botulinum A and the dose used were different than what is used for cosmetic purposes in humans. As billions of cosmetic Botox injections have now been done in humans with no significant problems ever reported to date, this is a very interesting study but the correlation to human applications has not been made.
Or as one of my patients said after asking me about this news story this week……too bad for the rats but I will not stop getting my Botox!
Dr Barry Eppley
Indianapolis, Indiana