Do you have a double chin you would like to get rid of but don't want to go through painful surgery? Now you may be able to do just that. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has just approved a new drug that promises to get rid of double chins without surgery.
The drug, known as Kybella, is a substance that is injected into your skin that dissolves the fat under the chin. Now that it has been approved, it is expected to be commercially available in June, according to the company.
"Options at the moment for submental fat [double chins] are [to] cut it out or suck it out," Dr. Susan Weinkle, a dermatologist in Florida who has been working with the drug in trials since 2007, said in March when the drug was poised for approval. "However, this is going to be a noninvasive in-the-office procedure that can be performed by your dermatologist and [gets] excellent results."
So should you give it a shot? Let's take a look at everything you should know before deciding it is right for you.
Kybella is a version of deoxycholic acid, "a naturally occurring molecule in the body that aids in the breakdown of dietary fat," according to its manufacturer, Kythera Biopharmaceuticals, based in Westlake Village, California. The company had been calling it ATX-101 before deciding to name it Kybella.
The drug works by dissolving the fat cells found in the chin. The drug destroys the fat cell's membrane, causing it to burst. What remains is then absorbed back into the body "via normal metabolic pathways," Dr. Derek Jones, who gave the presentation to the FDA about the drug, said.
To administer the treatment, doctors draw a grid of tiny dots beneath the patient's chin and injects 0.2 cubic centimeters in each dot. "I actually mark the area that I see the max amount of fat," Weinkle said.
The entire procedure takes approximately five minutes to do and the recovery is only two to three days to heal with no bandages being required.
So are you a good candidate for the procedure? "This is not necessarily a silver bullet that will solve the problem for every patient, but it certainly is a good option for appropriate candidates," said Dr. Joshua Zeichner, a dermatology professor at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan.
People with a lot of excess skin under their chins aren't good candidates as that is not a problem with fat. "It's a skin problem," he said.
While this may seem like a magic cure to fat, it can't be something used in other areas of the body. According to Jones, it would take a significant amount of the drug to remove fat from other areas of the body making liposuction and other fat removal options much more efficient.
