The Movement of Botulinum Toxin Through the Lateral Gastrocnemius Muscle in Humans: An Expanded Examination
Status:
Terminated
Trial end date:
2019-09-18
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Despite the wide-spread use of botulinum toxin (BT) to treat spasticity (increased muscle
tone) in central neurological disease, evidence-based guidance on dosing, dilution, and
injection technique is limited. The wide-spread use of BT in spasticity management, expense
of these agents, and detrimental impact from movement into non-injected muscles mandates a
better understanding of BT movement within muscles. A proof-of-concept paper written by
investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine introduced a non-invasive MRI approach with "voxel
thresholds" that was able to detect intramuscular effects of BT at 2 and 3 months
post-injection of BT. The purpose of the current set of studies is to refine this MRI
technique to better visualize the movement of botulinum toxin through muscle. In addition,
the investigators plan to explore, using the imaging technique, how spastic muscle and
differing dilutions affect BT movement in an effort to support the development of better
research techniques to study toxin movement in human muscle.