Doctors using Botox to treat foot ulcers
10:08 p.m. Friday, July 14, 2006
John Robinson, 58, used to be a car salesman, but the work was hard on the diabetic who's lost feeling in his feet.
"I’d get sores on the bottom of my feet and before I realize it, I’d have an infection,” he said. “And I’ve lost a couple toes and part of a foot."
Diabetic foot wounds are most common on the ball of the foot. Doctors usually treat the ulcers by casting the foot to take the pressure off and let them heal.
But once the patient is back in shoes, the sores often return.
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The Botox treatment study is in the early stages. Researchers said if it looks promising, they'd need a much larger study before Botox could become a standard treatment for diabetic foot wounds.
"Perhaps one of the reasons people re-ulcerate so quickly, sometimes within three weeks, is because their skin isn't tough enough to tolerate the pressures it's experiencing while it's walking,” said Mary Hastings, Physical Therapist.
Researchers hope Botox can help. At Washington University in Saint Louis, they're injecting the poison, known for relaxing wrinkles, into six places on the calf.
The idea is to temporarily weaken the muscle that pushes the foot forward, relieving the pressure.
"We still cast them to heal the ulcer, but then the hope is that then, when they start to walk again, their strength returns gradually,” Hastings said.
Ideally, when the calf muscle returns to full strength in six to eight weeks, the foot sore is gone for good.
"I don't know whether the injection helped because it's a blind study,” Robinson said. “I don't know if I, but so far I haven't had a sore on my foot since."
Maybe Botox is a step toward keeping it that way.
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