Mesotherapy is used to treat a broad spectrum of medical disorders such as allergies, arthritis, asthma, depression, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, immune system deficiencies, and insomnia. It is also used for a variety of conditions associated with chronic pain.
The dermatologic uses of mesotherapy include such conditions as acne, hair loss, various types of dermatitis, scars, chronic itching, psoriasis, stretch marks, spider veins, venous insufficiency, and vitiligo.
The cosmetic uses of mesotherapy include aesthetic medicine to treat photoaging and its various manifestations. It is intended for the tightening of loose, saggy skin on the face and neck, reducing the extent of wrinkling. Mesotherapy is also used to treat pigmentary changes.
In this chapter, we refer mainly to its cosmetic applications. Mesotherapy is a nonsurgical aesthetic medical treatment. The term itself was coined in 1958 by Dr Michel Pistor as a treatment employing minute doses of multiple pharmaceutical and homeopathic medications and standardized natural plant extracts, vitamins, amino acids, and other ingredients, which are injected into various levels of the skin depending on the indication of treatment. Mesotherapy may be injected subcutaneously (into the fat layer just beneath the skin) to treat localized adiposity, whereas for skin rejuvenation, the injection is targeted into the dermis.
The technique is called mesotherapy (from the Greek mesos, “middle”) because the injections are intended for tissues derived from the embryonic mesoderm layer, one of the three primary germ layers in the early embryo, which eventually becomes the supporting and nourishing layers of the skin, containing connective tissue, muscle, subcutaneous fat, and blood vessels.
In mesotherapy, a medicinal “bullet” is delivered directly to a particular target area in the body, as opposed to orally administered medication which must first pass through the gastrointestinal tract and is filtered by the liver before it is released into the bloodstream.
For example, when using oral medications intended to treat inflammation in the knee, only a small portion of what is ingested actually reaches the knee itself. In mesotherapy, on the other hand, a much smaller dose of the same medicine can be injected with a tiny needle very close to the target area, with the skin acting as an efficient time release delivery system. In essence, mesotherapy is based on a simple principle: to inject little, seldom, and at the right place.
By Evangeline B. Handog and Encarnacion R. Legaspi-Vicerra from Handbook of Cosmetic Skin Care, 2009