As someone who has never had botulinim toxin injected in my face as a way to prevent wrinkles, it never occurred to me that different strains of the toxin might have different levels of effectiveness. Yet enterprising researchers from San Francisco have studied these poisons extensively, pitting two types against each other in new research published in The Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery.
This battle to the death (of wrinkles) saw a number of patients injected with abobotulinumtoxinA on one side of their face and onabotulinumtoxinA on the other. In the image, images A&B are from the former toxin, C&D from the latter — and in case you didn’t notice, A&C are before, B&D are after.
In the double blind research, abobotulinumtoxinA was three times as effective as onabotulinumtoxinA at hiding the eye wrinkles of the patients, who preferred in 2-to-1.
So, next time you want to get potentially deadly toxins injected into your flesh, you know which variety to ask for.
