While Botox mostly gets attention for smoothing wrinkles, it had medical uses first—for example, to treat hand and head tremors. Here researchers tried injecting botulinum toxin into people with a voice tremor.

What the researchers wanted to know: Does botulinum toxin Type A (Botox) improve a voice tremor?

What they did: Between 1993 and 2000, doctors injected Botox in different concentrations into the skin and vocal cords of 13 people with voice tremors. The patients didn't have head, mouth, or jaw tremors, which can also make the voice sound tremulous. Before the injections, then two, four, and six weeks after, the patients did vocal tasks (like reading a standard paragraph) so physicians could rate the severity of their tremor.

What they found: All of the patients noticed their tremors getting better within a week of the injections. The researchers also thought the patients had improved. For a while, Botox made most of their speaking breathier, and three of the 13 had trouble swallowing—but those symptoms went away for almost everyone by the sixth week.

What the study means to you: It's possible that Botox injections would help a vocal tremor.

Caveats: There was no control group (patients with a vocal tremor who didn't get Botox), so it's impossible to judge how big the placebo effect of the injections was. Many patients with really bad tremors were excluded because their head or jaw shook, too, so Botox wouldn't necessarily work for them. The lead author has taken research funding and honoraria from Allergan, the company that makes Botox, in the past. (But the company didn't fund this study.)

Find out more: The company that makes Botox is happy to tell you all about it: www.botox.com

Read the article: Adler, C.H. et al. "Botulinum Toxin Type A for Treating Voice Tremor." Archives of Neurology. September 2004, Vol. 61, pp. 1416–1420.

Abstract online: http://archneur.ama-assn.org