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Yikes! - SM

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/25/health/25REME.html

Remedies: Wrinkles Gone. Headache, Too?

By JOHN O'NEIL

number of studies presented at the American Headache Society's conference in Seattle last week added evidence that shots of Botox, botulinum toxin type A, could help with migraine and tension headaches.

A total of 13 studies involving 650 patients were presented about Botox, which began to be investigated after the patients of plastic surgeons started reporting that shots to remove wrinkles were clearing up chronic headaches as well.

A study at the Houston Headache Clinic found that migraine patients reduced their use of headache drugs by up to 75 percent after Botox shots. In a study at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, half of patients with chronic tension headaches reported improvement three months after Botox shots, compared with 7 percent of those given placebo injections.

Another set of studies presented at the conference suggested that users of traditional drugs for migraines were better off taking them at the first sign of a headache, rather than holding off to see if the pains went away by themselves.

These studies involved triptans, a common class of migraine drugs. In a study conducted at the Harvard Medical School, triptans were given to 23 patients before their migraines moved to the point that they developed skin hypersensitivity, pain caused by touching their hair or scalps. The drugs eliminated all but two of the headaches, the study found. But when treatment was delayed until the skin became hypersensitive, the drugs worked in only 3 of 28 cases.

In another study, at the Palm Beach Headache Center, about two-thirds of patients given triptan within two hours of the start of the migraine said they were pain-free four hours later, compared with fewer than a third of patients given placebos.

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