The Food and Drug Administration has just approved a treatment for a very common ailment: double chins, which apparently affect around 70 percent of Americans. The treatment is a synthetic version of deoxycholic acid called Kybella.

Deoxycholic acid is a protein that helps the body break down fat. It is naturally present in the human body, but when it is injected, as Kybella will be, it dissolves cells. Kybella injections will destroy the membranes of the fat cells under patients’ chins and cause their bodies to absorb the fat.

The drug, the first ever approved for the treatment of what the FDA calls “moderate-to-severe fat below the chin,” or submental fat. Kybella is expected to debut this summer, and will be available through dermatologists and plastic surgeons. Kybella’s price will not be released until June when Kythera Biopharmaceuticals, the company that produces the drug, begins training physicians in its use.

The drug will be administered via up to fifty injections per treatment, and up to six treatments spaced at least one month apart may be used to give patients the results they want. Unlike current treatments for double chins, Kybella delivers permanent results.
As of now, the drug is only approved for use in the under-chin area, where fat collects in deposits just beneath the skin. The use of deoxycholic acid to dissolve fat stored deeper beneath the skin may be unsafe.

The treatment may cause temporary inflammation and soreness at the injection site. The area may also become numb. Deoxcholic acid treatments have occasionally caused temporary nerve damage, but this side effect is rare, and has never been permanent.

In a clinical trial for Kybella, 79 percent of patients who underwent treatment were satisfied with the results. It has not been approved for the treatment of double chins caused by obesity. The drug is expected to have a similar price to other injectable cosmetic treatments like Botox or collagen.