Treating Depression With Botox is a treatment bringing a brand new meaning to the phrase, "When you look good, you feel good."
In a very small pilot research the scientists discovered that female patients suffering from depression presented spectacular improvement when given Botox injections, with nine out of 10 do not meeting the clinical standards for depression any more, only two months after the treatments.
However, looking good had in fact very little to do with it, according to the Maryland dermatologist and cosmetic surgeon who conducted the research and now hopes to patent a botulism treatment for depression.
Eric Finzi, MD, PhD, claims that the Botox injections prevented the patients from frowning, which, in turn, helped to boost their depression.
"I believe that there is direct feedback between the facial frown muscles and the depression center of the brain," Finzi tells WebMD. "If you are able to prevent the harmful signals that arise when someone frowns, the brain interprets this as meaning that there is a significant improvement."
A Patient’s Story
Kathleen Delano was disbelieving first, just when she entered the research. But after battling depression for over 20 years, with conservative and traditional treatments providing little relief, she believed it was worth trying.
Kathleen Delano is a 45-year-old marketing director and a single mother. She told WebMD that she steadily began to feel better after being given the five injections that left her not able to frown.
"There was no remarkable cosmetic change, therefore that wasn’t it," she claims. "But I began to feel more like doing the things that I had earlier been avoiding."
Delano claims that shortly after she took up more physical activity and re-established ties with her friends. She became more spiritually active as well.
"It is ironic that the very things that can help relieve depression are the things that people are willing to do the least when they are depressed," she claims, adding that she believes the Botox injection made her recover very fast.
Study Highly Flawed
The ten female patients were recruited from Finzi’s group dermatology practice, but none of them had been receiving Botox treatment prior to entering the research.
All these women met the standards for constant major depression, based on their responses to standardized depression surveys. Seven out of the ten women had tried one or more antidepressant medications before, and four of them had been treated with psychotherapy.
Five Botox injections were given directly into the frown muscles (between the eyebrows) above the bridge of the nose, which had the effect of keeping the patients from frowning. Two months after the first injection, self-reported surveys suggested that nine of the ten patients did not have depression any more and the tenth had got better but was still depressed.
The research was published in the May issue of Dermatologic Surgery, the official journal of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery (ASDS).
In an accompanying commentary, ASDS president-elect Alastair Carruthers, FRCPC, quoted a series of flaws with the research and concluded that its finding has to be considered anecdotal.
Particularly, Carruthers communicated concerns about the study’s brief follow-up period, small number of participants, and lack of a comparison group. Furthermore, an even greater concern was that depression assessments were based on reports of the patients themselves.
Michelle Riba, MD, University of Michigan professor of psychiatry, was even more sceptical. Riba is immediate past president of the American Psychiatric Association.
According to Michelle Riba, the study’s lack of a comparison group and small size might have had easy influence on the findings. She was particularly worried that the research participants were enlisted from Finzi’s own group dermatology practice.
"There is no way to find out if these findings are factual or if they are due to a placebo effect in a research of this design," she tells WebMD.
Finzi confirms that the research was incomplete due to the fact that he had no outside funding. He hopes that the findings will interest others in doing greater, more carefully designed clinical trials.
"I came up with this idea and wanted to see if it warranted further examining," he claims. "And my conclusion is that it obviously does."
