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Review
. 2018 Apr 19;10(4):162.
doi: 10.3390/toxins10040162.

Analgesic Effects of Botulinum Toxin in Children with CP

Josephine Sandahl Michelsen  1 , Gitte Normann  2 , Christian Wong  3
Affiliations
Review

Analgesic Effects of Botulinum Toxin in Children with CP

Josephine Sandahl Michelsen et al. Toxins (Basel). .

Abstract

Experiencing pain is the greatest contributor to a reduced quality of life in children with cerebral palsy (CP). The presence of pain is quite common (~60%) and increases with age. This leads to missed school days, less participation, and reduced ambulation. Despite these alarming consequences, strategies to relieve the pain are absent and poorly studied. Moreover, it is difficult to evaluate pain in this group of children, especially in cases of children with cognitive deficits, and tools for pain evaluation are often inadequate. Botulinum toxin has been shown to alleviate pain in a variety of disorders and could potentially have an analgesic effect in children with CP as well. Even though most of the studies presented here show promising results, many also have limitations in their methodology as it is unlikely to capture all dimensions of pain in this heterogeneous group using only one assessment tool. In this review, we present a new way of examining the analgesic effect of botulinum toxin in children with CP using a variety of pain scores.

Keywords: botulinum toxin A; cerebral palsy; pain.

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Conflict of interest statement

First author is conducting the above described study and last author is supervising the study. Second author has no conflict of interest. Ipsen A/B is sponsoring this study, but has not been taking part in the creation of this article. The founding sponsors commented on the above described pending study in the design of the study, and will be allowed to comment on manuscripts coming from this study before submission. The founding sponsors will have no role in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, and in the decision to publish the results.

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