Botox Safety: Botulinum Neurotoxin Serotype A Escapes To The Central Nervous System

New findings published in the Journal of Neuroscience show how people who frequently use botox, a cosmetic treatment that's used to treat wrinkles and can also be used for some medical conditions, was found to escape to spots in the central nervous system.

"The discovery that some of the injected toxin can travel through our nerves is worrying, considering the extreme potency of the toxin," said lead study author UQ Queensland Brain Institute laboratory Professor Frederic Meunier, in a news release. "However, to this day no unwanted effect attributed to such transport has been reported, suggesting that Botox is safe to use."

The findings were based on a collaboration between scientists at the Queensland Brain Institute, UQ's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, the UQ School of Chemical Engineering, the CSIRO and teams from the United States of America, France and the United Kingdom.

With the help of cutting-edge microscopy equipment that was introduced to Queensland via Professor Meunier through a Queensland International Fellowship award and a Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities grant from the Australian Research Council, the researchers discovered that Botulinum neurotoxin serotype A, the more scientific term for Botox, is in fact, transported via our nerves back into the central nervous system, which could be more damaging for long term users.

"For the first time, we've been able to visualize single molecules of Botulinum toxin traveling at high speed through our nerves," Dr Tong Wang, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Professor Meunier's laboratory concluded. "We found that some of the active toxins manage to escape this route and intoxicate neighboring cells, so we need to investigate this further and find out how."