New Treatments –"Endopeel"
It is always interesting to hear of new treatments and to ponder the future possibilities for these treatments. One treatment that has caught my attention recently is called the “Endopeel” technique.
http://www.endopeel.com/en/abstract-endopeel/abstracts-endopeel?start=4
From what I can ascertain it seems to be some sort of muscle “peel” by injection into the muscles of a carbolic acid (phenolic) like substance. For some background appreciation I hvae linked to the following site.
http://chrisbarnes.blogharbor.com/_attachments/1720613/PhenolBenzylAlcohol.pdf
One can note from the above link that injections of Phenol into muscles affected by spacticity can relax these spasaming muscles by damaging some of the nerves that supply the muscles. So the effect is somewhat like Botulinum toxin but via a different and perhaps more chemically destructive pathway as phenols cause non-selective denaturing of proteins, that ultimately results in the destruction of nerves.
Botulinum toxin is more selective in its action. To make a muscle contract, a nerve sends a signal to the muscle. The point where the nerve and the muscle meet is called the neuromuscular junction. When the signal gets to the neuromuscular junction a chemical called acetylcholine is released from the nerve side of the junction and binds to the muscle side of the junction causing more chemical reactions that make the muscle contract. Botulinum toxin works by blocking the acetylcholine receptors on the muscle side of the junction. There are some interesting links below to some of these actions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gO8VJ_VcMhA
http://www.comawakening.com/spasticity.html
http://ptjournal.apta.org/content/84/1/76.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20332721
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15024330
So is “Endopeel” an alternative to Botulinum toxin and does the claimed lifting relate to the sort of indirect lifting that Botulinum toxin achieves by weakening some muscles so others work unopposed (and thereby more powerfully)? The inventor claims that lifting is achieved by “myoplasty, myopexy and myotension as main mechanisms of action”. By this I am given to understand that the injected muscle is functionally enhanced.
I must confess that (considering the weakening actions of Phenol on overactive muscles in spasticity) I’m unable to grasp how a muscle injected with a Phenolic can directly induce or enhance lifting in that injected muscle.
Nevertheless perhaps we will gain a better functional appreciation if “Endopeel” technique ultimately gains popularity in Australia.