In the News: Problems with Botox?

Newsweek has published a report of new evidence that Botox may be inflitrating the central nervous system and finding its way into the brain:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/131749

A New Reason to Frown

Does Botox get into the brain? Troubling research contradicts earlier findings about the treatment.

By Sharon Begley

In a reversal of the usual sequence in science, researchers have discovered, after millions of people have received the drug, something fundamental about how Botox can act. Contrary to what turned up in preclinical testing, botulinum toxin can travel along neurons from the injection site into the brain, at least in lab animals....

Within three days, the toxin had migrated from the whisker muscles to the brainstem, where it disrupted neuronal activity. "The discovery was quite serendipitous ... and surprising," Matteo Caleo, who led the study, told the journal Science. "A significant portion of the toxin is active where it's not intended to be." That stands in contrast to the findings of earlier studies, which suggested that the neurotoxin is completely broken down at the injection site into innocuous compounds and does not migrate beyond it—or if it does, only into the bloodstream or lymph system.