Xeomin

What is Xeomin?

Xeomin (incobotulinumtoxinA) is an injectable neurotoxin that temporarily relaxes muscles to reduce the appearance of lines and wrinkles created by dynamic facial movements, such as smiling, frowning, or raising your eyebrows.

It’s FDA-approved to treat moderate to severe frown lines between the eyebrows (glabellar lines), but it’s commonly used off-label to treat everything from gummy smiles to boxy jawlines.

Xeomin is also FDA-approved to treat neck pain caused by cervical dystonia, eye spasms known as blepharospasm, and upper limb spasticity.

What are the pros and cons of Xeomin?

Pros

Xeomin injections require no downtime. You can get the treatment done during your lunch hour and head straight back to work.

Along with smoothing existing lines, it can help prevent new wrinkles from forming. It’s common for young people to get neurotoxin injections as a preventive measure, to keep lines from digging in or deepening.

Xeomin can be used to shrink certain large muscles, like the masseters (chewing muscles), over time. The effect is both functional—a reduction in painful clenching and grinding—and cosmetic.

It’s safe for all skin types and tones.

Effects are temporary, so if you’re unhappy with the results, you’re not stuck with them—they’ll gradually disappear over about four months.

The most common side effects of Xeomin—injection site bruising, swelling, soreness, and short-term headaches—are minor and transient.

Cons

As with similar botulinum-based muscle relaxants, results are temporary; you’ll have to get periodic touch-ups to maintain them.

While Xeomin can help with lines caused by muscle movements and facial expressions, it can’t erase etched-in wrinkles that are visible when your face is at rest.

In the hands of an inexperienced injector, you could temporarily end up with a crooked smile, uneven eyebrows, or droopy eyelids.

Xeomin vs. Botox and other neuromodulators: How do they compare?

Xeomin is a botulinum toxin type A, so it works very similarly to Botox (onabotulinumtoxinA), Dysport (abobotulinumtoxinA): by blocking signals between nerves and muscles so the injected muscle can’t contract and wrinkle the skin. Xeomin does, however, contain the stabilizing protein human serum albumin.

In terms of cost and longevity, it’s quite similar to Botox and its competitors.

Xeomin also differs in that it doesn’t contain so-called complexing proteins (which are produced by the same bacteria that makes the toxin). The way Xeomin is manufactured removes these proteins from the active ingredient, botulinum toxin type A, which for certain patients, it’s reassuring when a product has fewer unnecessary ingredients.

Some doctors theorize that these purer toxin formulations may be less likely to cause drug resistance over time, though this has yet to be clinically proven.