Botox injections not only remove wrinkles, but may also help treat depression, a study suggests.
Experts from the US and Germany extracted a database of the reported negative side effects of drug use, targeting patients who received Botox injections.
They found that patients who had Botox with side effects were 40–88 percent less likely to experience depression than those who underwent other treatments for the same reasons.
Botox is used to treat various conditions outside of cosmetic procedures, including excessive sweating, migraines, spasms, and overactive bladders.
According to the World Health Organization, more than 264 million people worldwide experience depression.
While the condition is typically treated with a combination of psychotherapy and antidepressant medications, they are ineffective for approximately one-third of patients.
Consequently, new treatment options are highly sought after; however, it remains to be confirmed exactly how Botox could combat depression.
Botox injections not only remove wrinkles, but could also help treat depression, a condition experienced by some 264 million people, a study suggests (stock image).
“For years, doctors have observed that Botox injected for cosmetic reasons appears to alleviate depression in their patients,” said author and pharmacologist Ruben Abagyan of the University of California, San Diego.
Softening severe wrinkles in the forehead region has been thought to interrupt a feedback loop that reinforces negative emotions.
“But we have found here that the mechanism can be more complex, because it really doesn’t matter where the Botox is injected.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Adverse Effects Reporting System, or FAERS, for short, is a database of negative effects that people have reported after taking various medications. It contains about 13 million individual reports.
The system was designed to help monitor the appearance of new adverse drug effects, to ensure that each remains adequately low-risk for continued prescribing.
However, in their study, Professor Abagyan and colleagues realized that they could use the database differently, to detect when people experienced the absence of a given condition, compared to a control group, when were taking certain medications.
After ruling out cases where people had received antidepressants and Botox, the team selected nearly 40,000 reports of people who had experienced adverse effects after receiving neurotoxin injections.
These reports covered Botox treatments for eight different reasons, with injection sites that include locations on the forehead, extremities, neck, and bladder.
The researchers’ analysis indicated that patients treated with Botox at six of the eight injection sites reported depression 40 to 88 percent less frequently than patients who received different treatment for the same conditions.
The researchers studied patients who received Botox treatments for eight different reasons, with injection sites that include locations on the forehead, limbs, neck and bladder, as shown in the image.
Experts from the US and Germany extracted a US database of reported negative side effects of drug use, targeting patients who received Botox injections. They found that Botox users with side effects were 40-88 percent less likely to experience depression than patients who underwent other treatments for the same reasons.
“This finding is exciting because it supports a new treatment to affect mood and combat depression, one of the common and dangerous mental illnesses,” said article author Tigran Makunts, also of the University of California, San Diego.
Furthermore, he added, the results are “based on a large amount of statistical data, rather than observations on a limited scale.”
The team hypothesized that, after the injection, Botox can travel to parts of the central nervous system that regulate emotions and moods, and that could be having an impact there.
The findings, however, come with some caveats. First, although the team controlled the use of antidepressants, they could not rule out the potential impact of other prescription and over-the-counter medications.
The researchers’ analysis indicated that patients treated with Botox at six of the eight injection sites reported depression 40 to 88 percent less frequently than patients who received different treatment for the same conditions, as shown in the picture
Furthermore, the FAERS database only covers a subset of Botox users, those who reported experiencing negative treatment side effects, and therefore the findings may not be representative of the broader effects of the injection.
In addition, Botox treatment, by successfully resolving other medical problems, may indirectly mitigate depression.
Currently, clinical trials are underway to explore whether Botox injections to the forehead could be used successfully in the treatment of depression; however, according to the researchers, additional trials may now be requested to explore other sites.
The full study findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.
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