BOTOX: Study Reports New Concerns

If you're on the fence about whether or not to take the wrinkle-removing BOTOX plunge, here's something you may want to consider:

A new study has found the potent injectable may not stay strictly in your wrinkles. It could migrate to your brain.

It's true. Animal research published in the April 2008 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, confirms suspicions that the botulinum-based wrinkle injectable known as BOTOX ( also Dysport, Neuronox, Xeomin and VISTABEL) can migrate from the site of injection into the central nervous system.

The research adds to a growing body of evidence that the popular cosmetic wrinkle filler - also used for treatments of muscular disorders - has more than just a local effect. Now, however, there is some proof that it can travel along nerve pathways in the body to other distant areas, and impact the neurological function in that area.

BOTOX works by damaging a protein that is essential for cell communication. In the case of wrinkle injections, it stops the signal from the brain to the muscle in the face that is holding on to the wrinkle. When the muscle relaxes, the wrinkle disappears.

The new research, conducted by doctors at the Italian National Research Council, say that while nerve cells at the site of the injection absorb some of the botulinum toxin, some of that toxin was also carried along nerve lines and released into other cells, where proteins were also destroyed. The study, conducted on mice, and rats found that 3 days after injections into the whisker muscles, remnants of botulinum were found in the brain stems and in the back of the eyes of the rodents.

This research contradicts earlier studies which reported that the injected material was confined to the injection site where it eventually degraded.

Translating results into [possible human effects, experts caution that the amount of toxin injected into the wrinkle, along with the concentration of t he dosage, may play a key role in determining whether or not the migration takes place.

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