A new study says that in some cases Botox may reduce the number of migraine headaches in some patients.
The study was presented at the annual meeting in Philadelphia of the American Headache Society.
To date, Botox's main claim to fame has been smoothing out wrinkles, but this new study shows that its effects may be far more than skin deep.
Researchers in the study looked at a specific group of migraine patients whose frequent attacks necessitated daily preventative medications.
In the U.S. alone there are reputed to be at least 6 million people suffering from this disabling condition.
Researcher David Dodick, MD. from the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, says his team studied 288 migraine sufferers, who on average, experienced headaches on 13.5 days of the month. They were on all around 42 years old, and most were women.
The participants at the start of the study were not taking any medications to prevent the migraines from occurring, says Dodick.
Some of the patients received three treatments of Botox, over a period of 11 months, while the others were given placebo injections.
At the end of an 180 day period, the Botox group had a greater increase in headache-free days.
Their headaches occurred on average on 7.5 days each month, which was six more headache-free days than at the start of the study.
The placebo group, meanwhile also experienced more headache-free days but not as much, they had only 4.5 more headache-free days per month.