Botox For More Than Just Wrinkles

When most people think about botox, they probably think about fixing wrinkles.

However, the toxin was developed and approved for dystonia, a neuromuscular disorder that causes involuntary muscle spasms in one or more parts of the body.

In addition to losing control of their muscles, dystonia patients describe the pain sort of like having a constant, unrelenting charley horse in a muscle -- all day and night.

"Most patients are looking for help not only to relieve their muscle spasms, but they also want some relief from the pain," said Dr. Miovrag Velickovic of Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York.

That's where botox comes in. It's a toxin that's produced by the bacterium that causes botulism, and it works by blocking the signals that come from the nerves that tell muscles to contract.

"If the muscle does not get the signal, the muscle stays in its normal resting state so there is no contraction, there is no spasm, there is no pain," Velickovic said.

Botox wears off, so patients usually need to be reinjected every three months or so. Some people develop antibodies that inactivate the toxin, but there variations of the drug may still be effective.

Dystonia affects more people than muscular dystrophy and Huntington's disease, yet the disease is still 90 percent misdiagnosed, and research is extremely underfunded.