Double Chin Facial Injection, ATX-101, To Earn FDA Approval In May
If you’ve desperately tried to get rid of the annoying layer of skin that begins to droop under your chin once age and weight have made their mark on you, you certainly know the travails of having a double chin. A quick Google search yields various suggestions on how to get rid of a double chin that involve changing your posture, fixing your makeup or haircut, or even doing “chin exercises.”
Perhaps you’ve tried these things, but nothing seems to work, and you don’t want to shell out $2,000 to $4,000 for a plastic surgery procedure. Now, a new drug will be attempting to solve this problem for people who see a double chin as a plague — especially those who are neither old or obese, and can’t get rid of it any other way. Whether the drug is effective — or safe — has yet to be seen; the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will be testing it for approval in May.
Known as the ATX-101, the drug is an injection that contains deoxycholic acid, a naturally occurring molecule that eats away at fat. According to Kythera Biopharmaceuticals, the company that developed the drug, the treatment would destroy fat cells while leaving other cells healthy.
“ATX-101 is currently in late stage clinical trials for the reduction of submental fat, which commonly presents as a double chin,” Kythera writes on its website. “This presence of fat under the chin, which commonly presents as a double chin, can be influenced by multiple factors, including aging and genetics, and often cannot be changed by diet or exercise.”
During the past six years, clinical trials worldwide have tested ATX-101 on 1,600 people and found that 90 percent of the participants had maintained a “meaningful reduction of the fat after two years,” and a large chunk of the participants reported satisfaction with the results.
In a 2013 study that examined the effects of ATX-101 on 363 men and women between ages 18 and 65, researchers found that the injections “yield a clinically meaningful and statistically signifiant reduction in unwanted submental fat, decrease the psychological impact on patients, and are well tolerated,” according to Professor Berthold Rzany, the lead author of that study. The same study found that the injections also caused side effects in some of the participants, including swelling, pain, bruising, and numbness. But perhaps this will all be worth it if that double chin can be erased.