A brief history of neurological botulinum toxin therapy in Germany

Botulinum toxin (BT) has long been infamous in food safety and biological warfare. In the early 1970s, Alan B Scott of San Francisco invented its therapeutic use originally in extraocular eye muscles to treat strabismus using a therapeutic BT type A preparation provided by Edward J Schantz and Eric A Johnson. Subsequently a large number of medical indications based on motor and glandular hyperactivity and—most recently—chronic migraine are now treated by BT therapy. BT’s highly specific and elaborate mechanism of action represents a completely novel therapeutic principle which will have consequences far beyond existing indications. BT therapy entered neurology through Stanley Fahn in New York from where C David Marsden brought it to London. From here neurological BT therapy came to Germany through Reiner Benecke and Dirk Dressler. Ophthalmological BT therapy was brought directly to Germany by Peter Roggenkämper, a fellow of Scott. By the early 1990s, several users in Germany had learned about BT therapy and made the country one of the most productive countries in clinical BT science—backed up by a long tradition of solid basic BT research. For several years now, however, BT therapy in Germany has been stagnating due to a lack of reimbursement for the medical treatment and due to off-label use challenges.