Sandy,

Thank you! That was obviously news to me. (Worse yet if I saw and forgot it.) So running the names of the priciple investigators on the next study (see below), here it is:

Carroll I, Clark JD, Mackey S., Sympathetic block with botulinum toxin to treat complex regional pain syndrome, Ann Neurol. 2009 Mar;65(3):348-51 FREE FULL TEXT at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...ihms140157.pdf

Abstract
Complex regional pain syndrome is a refractory pain condition with few tested therapies. We hypothesized that botulinum toxin A (BTA) would prolong analgesia after sympathetic blocks in patients with complex regional pain syndrome. We compared the duration of standard lumbar sympathetic block (LSB) with bupivacaine to LSB with bupivacaine and BTA in nine patients with refractory complex regional pain syndrome. Median time to analgesic failure was 71 (95% confidence interval, 12-253) days after LSB with BTA compared with fewer than 10 days (95% confidence interval, 0-12) after standard LSB (log-rank, p < 0.02). BTA profoundly prolonged the analgesia from sympathetic block in this preliminary study.

PMID: 19334078 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19334078

And if you go on the RSDSA site, one of the first things you'll see on the homepage is that enrollment in the follow up study is now open ! http://www.rsds.org/3/research/Stanford_BotoxStudy.html Drs. Ian Carroll and Sean Mackey are apparently the lead investigators. You will see the same form in the STANFORD SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE & PAIN LABORATORY (SNAPL) website, at http://snapl.stanford.edu/botox/ along with its "secure screening questionnaire" for the new study https://med.stanford.edu/survey/botoxsn/

Note one thing in both the news release and the abstract, it says that the addition of BTA to the standard sympathetic block extented the mean time of post-block pain relief from "less than 10 days . . . . to 71 days (10 weeks)," thereby implying that a good number of the controls were still in the acute phase, otherwise they would be highly unlikely to get anything approaching 10 days of relief from a standard block. When going through the article, it is a little cryptic about the range of time folks had CRPS prior to entering the study: "All patients . . . had: (1) spontaneous pain rating greater than 6 of 10; (2) duration of pain at least 6 months; . . . ." That said, I note that "How long have you had pain in this area?" is a field in the new "screening form." [Translation: if length of affliction is not explicitly noted in the report of the first study, then it really must be in the next, especially if they are using any particular duration of pain over six months as a screening criteria.]

Among the many possibilities this work raises, is the following: If, in at least the acute phase, an LSB+ will buy 10 weeks of relief, how long could you keep it going by scheduling the procedure every two months? The notice of the new study doesn't suggest that it's going in that direction (intermixing the test juice with the control in apparently all subjects) and the consent form spells it out: all subjects will receive two blocks four week apart, one a basic block and the other with BTA, double-blinding the order in which they are delivered. http://snapl.stanford.edu/botox/Consent_11-17-09.doc

But perhaps later on. Then again, the article notes something that suggests this is not for the squeemish:

Adverse Events—One [of ten] patient experienced significant nausea and emesis that started 5 hours after her BTA injection and lasted 2 days; it resolved spontaneously.

Mike