The aesthetic industry doesn’t stand still for long. With increasing regularity, new treatments come along and grab the public imagination.
And we could be on the threshold of another.
Botox and fillers may be sharing headlines with a brand new injectable treatment soon. Aesthetic giant Allergan have just bought the company behind fat dissolving injectable Kybella.
What is Kybella?
The deoxycholic acid based drug was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in April this year.
It is designed specifically to treat submental fat – the dreaded double chin. While traditionally this area has been treated surgically, the goal is for Kybella to position itself as a viable non-surgical alternative to chin liposuction.
Though non-surgical options are available for the double chin, none are effective at reducing the submental fat. So if the treatment works well, it could be in huge demand from both practitioners and patients.
As New York dermatologist Dr Heidi Waldorf explains:
“We could lift from above with a facial filler, tighten from outside with an ultrasound laser, and smooth with a toxin — but we could not get rid of the underlying fat without something more invasive like liposuction”.
Unlike liposuction, the results won’t be instant with Kybella. Patients will need a course of the fat-dissolving injections over several months to achieve the best outcome.
But with no general anaesthetic or surgery needed, the treatment is bound to appeal to patients who are looking for improvement but nervous about the knife.
Allergan’s investment in Kybella
It’s clear Allergan has faith in the treatment’s potential, having paid a staggering $2.1bn to acquire Kythera, the biotech group behind Kybella, to stop it being snapped up by rivals.
The cosmetic treatments market is huge in the US. More than 6m treatments were performed last year, including 1.6m anti-wrinkle injections and more than 1m facial fillers.
Acquiring Kybella is Allergan’s latest move to diversify its product portfolio as it looks to capitalise on the growing demand for non-surgical treatments.
Other recent new products have included facial filler Juvéderm Voluma and Latisse, a serum for growing longer, thicker eyelashes.
Pricing for Kybella has yet to be announced, but the company are currently rolling out a training programme for the treatment.
As we know in the UK aesthetic industry, what happens ‘over there’ inevitably happens over here too. So we’ll be watching with interest to see how Kybella takes off. Who knows, perhaps we’ll see Kybella training sitting alongside our regular Botox and filler courses soon.
Cosmetic Courses offer a varied programme of aesthetic training courses for medical professionals, including Botox and filler training. For information on our courses, or to book a place, please contact the team on 01844 318317 or email [email protected].
