Botox could ease depression in addition to wrinkles, study finds - CNN

Because of this hypothesis, those studies mainly used forehead injections to attempt to treat depression, but were limited in terms of sample size, shaky methodologies, injection sites and mixed results.

Botox for different conditions

To address the limitations of prior studies, the researchers analyzed more than 45,000 reports of adverse events resulting from Botox treatments from the US Food and Drug Administration's Adverse Event Reporting System.

Patients who received Botox injections to treat excessive sweating, facial wrinkles, migraine, spasticity and spasms reported depression 40% to 88% less often than people who underwent different treatments for the same conditions.

"We found that (the effect) doesn't depend on the location of the injection and it doesn't depend on the (medical conditions), which are quite diverse for Botox," said Ruben Abagyan, the lead author of the study and a professor in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego.

A 2019 study found that Botox injections for muscle spasms may go beyond the injection site and affect the opposing muscle groups and reflexes through changing neural activity.

Reduction in muscle tone as a result of Botox injections, which weaken muscles, might counteract depression.

"The results are even more impressive when you realize that the authors removed any patients who were taking antidepressants so as not to be biased; their results may have been even stronger if they had kept that other data in."

The researchers suggested that Botox injections could be an alternative treatment for those who find no luck with common treatments for depression, and also for those experiencing both chronic conditions and depression.

"If you can kill two birds with one stone, I think that's definitely something to consider."

Depression carries with it dangers such as suicide risk, but so do Botox injections if the doses are disproportionate to what patients can handle, Abagyan said.