Battle for Beauty: Botox or Dysport
Botox's stranglehold on the 'de-wrinkling' market may have found a match. A new randomized study published online in the Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery, has found that Botox's competitor Dysport is better at treating crow's feet.
The study compared the effectiveness of both cosmetic drugs is smoothing wrinkles in 90 volunteers. The researchers from the Mass Clinic in San Francisco and University of California, San Francisco randomly injected Botox in one side of the face and Dysport in the other. The researchers then evaluated the results on a five point scale and asked the participants to indicate which side they preferred, according to a Time article. Dysport proved to be significantly better than Botox in treating crows' feet. At rest there was no discernible difference between the two drugs but when the participants contracted their facial muscles the difference was made more apparent. After 30 days the patient's themselves professed their preference for the side of the face that was treated with Dysport.
The researchers have no reason for why one drug is better than the other but they offered this assessment in their analysis that the main difference between the two drugs is in the hemagglutinin and non-hemagglutinin surrounding each protein, "one may theorize that these differences in efficacy can be ascribed to the hemagglutinin and non-hemagglutinin binding." Further research is still needed to determine exactly why Dysport is better and why it works better in different areas of the face.
Patients may not be completely jumping to the Dysport wagon just yet. Botox has become a household name and it would take a lot of convincing for the masses to use other cosmetic drugs. And just to clarify this study asked both makers of Botox and Dysport to fund the study but only Medicis Aesthetics actually paid.