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This is taken from Bloomberg.com (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601202&sid=ak2D4ZZWD498)

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) — Allergan Inc.’s Botox, given in the doses used to reduce facial wrinkles, may stop certain kinds of migraines that patients describe as crushing or “eye-popping” more than other types, a study found.

Patients who responded to Botox reported their migraines were reduced to fewer than 1 day a month from almost 7, according to a study of 18 people published today in the Archives of Dermatology. The researchers said that people with migraine pain called “imploding” — that felt like a vise was tightened around their heads — were helped more than those whose migraine pain felt “explosive.”

Medical trials have reported inconsistent data on how much Botox helps reduce migraine pain, the researchers said. Irvine, California-based Allergan has filed for approval with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to market Botox as a treatment for chronic migraines, which affects about three million Americans, company spokeswoman Crystal Muilenburg said.

“This could revolutionize the way people with these migraines are treated,” said one author of today’s study, Jeffrey Dover, an associate clinical professor of dermatology at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, in a Feb. 12 telephone interview. “It was the imploding headaches that responded and the ocular headaches,” Dover said. “They required little to no pain medication for headaches in the months after their Botox treatment.”

Today’s study was funded in part by Allergan and the National Institutes of Health.

Injection

Botox, a purified form of the poison botulinum, is administered by doctors as an injection. It is approved as a short-term treatment to smooth wrinkles in facial skin by temporarily paralyzing the muscles underneath. Americans underwent almost 2.5 million Botox procedures in 2008, the latest year for which data is available, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

Researchers don’t know how Botox works to stop migraine pain, said study co-author Rami Burstein, a professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School in Boston. The drug may block the signals in sensory nerves located on the outside of the head that may cause the migraines called imploding and ocular, he said in a Feb. 12 telephone interview.

The study looked at 18 migraine sufferers who had already received or were planning to get Botox injections for cosmetic purposes. Each was interviewed and asked to describe their pain. Of the 18, 10 said they had so-called imploding migraines or ocular migraines. Eight patients had exploding, or splitting, headaches. One patient was in both groups.

Relief

Three months after the injections, 13 patients said they had a reduction in migraine pain, including 10 who had the imploding or “eye-popping” headaches and three with exploding pain, the researchers found. Their average frequency of migraines dropped to 0.7 days per month from 6.8 days before they had the Botox.

Among the 10 who had imploding or ocular headaches, their migraine frequency dropped even more to 0.6 days a month from an average of 7.1 days a month, the study showed. The other three with exploding headaches had a drop in migraine frequency to 9.4 days a month from 11.4 days.

All those who did not report significant relief from Botox had explosive migraines.

In the study, the researchers gave patients a dose of Botox used for cosmetic purposes, which was lower than doses previously used to treat migraines, Dover said. Also, the patients in this study were already scheduled to get Botox for cosmetic purposes rather than for migraines, so that alleviated some potential bias from patients who may say the injection works just to receive free treatment, he said.

Cost

Botox cosmetic treatments cost $700 to $1,000 on average for one session, said Dover, who is also director of SkinCare Physicians, a practice specializing in dermatology treatments in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Migraine sufferers would need about four sessions a year for as long as their headaches return, he said.

Burstein is a consultant to Allergan and receives payment for lectures and grants for clinical and animal research.

Research presented last year at the International Headache Congress in Philadelphia showed that patients on Botox had 7.8 fewer days per month afflicted with any headaches including migraines, compared with 6.4 fewer headache days on placebo.

Allergan’s Muilenburg said the company may win U.S. approval later this year.

Migraine treatments include over-the-counter painkillers, as well as Johnson & Johnson’s Topamax and GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Imitrex. Map Pharmaceuticals Inc. is developing an inhaled migraine therapy called Levadex.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2010 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Botox and Dysport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.