A search for beauty, and then a trail of tears

Three years ago, Maria Castrillon says she paid $400 to a local beauty salon for mineral oil injections, a Colombian beauty treatment that she expected to provide plastic surgery-like results without the surgery.

Days later, she developed pain, fever, discoloration and itchiness. Within a year, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis that made it difficult for her to walk or even bend down and tie her shoes, according to her rheumatologist, Dr. Mark Robbins. The oil apparently triggered a moderate to severe case of the disease, which she will probably need medication to control for the rest of her life, he said.

Then last year, Castrillon ended up at Brigham and Women's Hospital, where she had the first of seven surgeries to remove the oil injections allegedly administered at the Krystal Beauty Salon Inc., since shut down by the state's Division of Professional Licensure, which oversees hairdressers and other professionals who require a state license.

Now, two years since Castrillon's diagnosis and three years since the injections, the East Boston resident awaits trial on the civil suit she filed in Suffolk Superior Court last year seeking damages from salon owners for personal injury, disability, pain and suffering, and loss of income, among other things. And she's hoping her example will save others from similar pain.

''This kind of subcutaneous injection is popular in certain ethnic and cultural communities," Robbins said in a recent interview, noting that other victims of the Eastie salon or others like it could be suffering in silence. ''I would bet there are a lot of people out there [with similar symptoms] but I wonder if they have made the connection" between the injections and the possibility of auto-immune system ailments like rheumatoid arthritis.''It is likely that the injections stimulated the immune system to react in a more exuberant way, resulting in the rheumatoid arthritis," said Robbins. ''The body sees the oil as a foreign body and reacts almost as if it's rejecting it," said Robbins, who began treating Castrillon in August 2003.

''She came in unable to move, walk, get out of bed -- very much disabled, barely able to function," said Robbins.

Castrillon's plastic surgeon, Dr. Elof Eriksson, chief of plastic surgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said he had never seen such severe damage from a so-called beauty procedure. Eriksson has operated on Castrillon seven times to remove mineral oil from her system. Removing it all, he said, ''is a practical impossibility" because it has already spread to other parts her body. One fear, he said, is that the oil and any impurities it might contain could spread to her lungs and do serious new damage.

''We don't know what's going to happen because, to a great degree, this is uncharted territory," said Eriksson, who called state regulators last year and reported the East Boston salon, where Castrillon says she had the injections in November 2002.

Inspectors from the state's Division of Professional Licensure shut down the Chelsea Street salon on Aug. 31, 2004. They found no mineral oil in the raid but cited the establishment for unsanitary conditions and confiscated syringes, and equipment for anesthesia and other procedures the salon operators were not licensed to perform.

The Federal Drug Administration has not approved mineral oil injections as a beauty treatment. . Even FDA-approved injections such as the anti-wrinkle drug Botox can only be legally performed by a licensed physician in a sterile medical office setting, according to Anne L. Collins, director of the state's Division of Professional Licensure. She urged consumers to check the license of the doctor and the establishment before agreeing to any cosmetic procedures.

''We want consumers to be protected and have the right sanitary conditions for their procedures," Collins said. ''They have to use more than common sense. They should investigate."

Collins's office issued a violation against a barbershop in Pembroke for illegally providing Botox injections last December. Other cases around the country include a Florida doctor, who had his license to practice medicine revoked in January, and an Oregon doctor, who was indicted this summer on federal charges, both for injecting patients with forms of Botox that do not have FDA approval.

In May of this year, after a probe by Collins's office, the state's Board of Registry in Cosmetology suspended the Krystal salon's license for six years. The board also slapped its owners, Diana Patricia Alzate and Diego Quintero, with six-year suspensions.

Thomas R. Gratzer, an attorney representing the defunct salon's owners, had no comment when reached at his Dorchester office. In documents Gratzer filed with the court on the pair's behalf, Alzate and Quintero deny providing the injections to Castrillon.

As for Castrillon, she said she has struggled to keep her family afloat financially since her health has deteriorated and she lost her job.

''I just cry and cry," said the 41-one-year-old single mother of four. ''Sometimes I have to send them to school hungry because there is no food in the house."