ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A rare, but unsightly, reaction to facial fillers could be caused by the body's own response to an infection.

Gottfried Lemperle, M.D., reported his findings at the annual meeting of the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery in Orlando, Fla., this week.

Injected line fillers, like Restylane, were among the top five non-surgical cosmetic procedure in 2005. But Dr. Lemperle says all fillers can cause granulomas. He says one in 1,000 patients will develop the reaction, which can appear as a discolored and hard lump at the site of the injection.

"The most common adverse effects occur in the first two weeks," says Dr. Lemperle. "But they are minor and they disappear." He says the real problems are the later effects like granulomas, which can occur one year to two years later. "The reason for this granuloma, I have found, is often an infection ... a systemic infection which the patient had three months or three weeks before this onset of a granuloma."

Dr. Lemperle says by analyzing studies of granuloma formation he found nearly one third of the patients with granulomas had suffered a memorable bacterial infection just prior to the granuloma formation. "It's pneumonia, tonsillitis, nephritis, it's a gastroenteritis ... but it's so severe the patients still remember it," he says. He theorizes the body's immune response to the infection causes the body to overreact to the injected fillers. All sites that have been injected typically act up at the same time.

"Because most of these reactions are over reactions and you can bring down everything with steroids," he says. Dr. Lemperle says cosmetic doctors should use Cortisone to treat granulomas.

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