There are 4 different botulinum toxin brands available in UK; let’s Dr Marion guide you through the pharmaceutical maze of the botulinum toxin.
Various names and abbreviations are attached to Botulinum toxin. I hope these explanations will make reading and listening about the topic less confusing….
– Botulinum toxin is called a Neurotoxin as it’s a toxin, which is active on the nerve, controlling the action of the muscles or the secretion of the glands.
-Botox is often used in newspaper, magazine and on Internet as a generic name instead of Botulinum toxin. BOTOX is one of the brand names, registered as a trademark, and it uses inappropriately like Kleenex for facial tissue paper.
-There are 3 Botulinum toxins type A (BOTOX, DYSPORT, and XEOMIN) and 1 type B (NEUROBLOC), available in UK for therapeutic uses. The FDA (Food and Drug administration which is a regulatory body for drugs in USA) has decided to give 4 different chemical names to each of these brands, as there is no standard equivalence between the numbers of units of these brands. Ona-botulinumtoxinA for BOTOX, Abo-botulinumtoxinA for Dysport, Inco-botulinumtoxinA for Xeomin, Rima-botulinumtoxinB for Neurobloc.
-To add to the complexity of the story, the abbreviations are also changing. We used commonly Botox, BTX, and recently we have been asked to use BoNT-A (pronounce Bonte) and BoNT-B by the scientific community!
But don’t worry too much! Despite or because of all these various labels, neurologists communicate well between each other about the treatment of their patients.
Infodystonia 