Drug-fuelled slimming boom drives race to cure gaunt ‘Ozempic face’

When Sandra first started losing weight on Wegovy last year, she could not have been happier. She had struggled with her weight for decades, unable to shift her BMI out of the “obese” range. 

Within four months of starting a course of weight-loss injections, Sandra had dropped 13kg. “I fully admit I never would have gotten this far without it,” she wrote on Mumsnet. 

Still, she acknowledged there had been some downsides.

“If I really looked objectively I would need a boob lift now as they are smaller and less full, and a tummy tuck for loose skin,” Sandra said. 

What’s more, with the rapid weight loss, she admitted that her face had changed. It was certainly thinner, with the weight having dropped from her cheeks.

Sandra said she had to remind herself that this is not about her looks. “I am doing it for my internal organs and my joints.”

It is a trade-off which Sandra may be willing to accept. But a growing number of those on obesity drugs are less relaxed about the sudden loss of weight in their face – a phenomenon known as “Ozempic face”, where people report having sunken cheeks and sagging skin on their faces after shedding the pounds. 

Sharon Osbourne said last year she thought she had become “too gaunt” after taking Ozempic, Novo Nordisk’s diabetes drug, which is used off-label to treat obesity. Novo Nordisk also makes the Wegovy weight-loss drug, which has been proven to help people lose an average of 15pc of their body weight.

“I didn’t want to go this thin,” Osbourne said at the time. “It just happened.”

With the market for weight loss drugs expected to hit $90bn (£70bn) in the next few years, it is a frustration that executives are preparing to pounce on.

The view is that, as more and more people take obesity injections, an increasing number of patients will be on the hunt for solutions to their own “Ozempic face”.

Businesses selling vitamins, supplements and injectable fillers are all piling into the space, with the promise of being able to re-plump people’s faces and banish sagginess after weight loss. 

“Ozempic face horror”, one skincare company says in a recent release. “Rapid weight loss trend leaves users with sagging skin – discover the device that can help!”

Competition to get customers to spend on reversing weight-loss drugs’ effect on their faces is expected to be significant.

Among those making an early play are the world’s biggest food makers, keen to offset the blow from more people taking these appetite suppressants.

Nestlé last month signalled it would be targeting “Ozempic face” by selling dietary supplements to counteract the effects of weight-loss drugs. 

The products are designed to “complement” weight-loss treatments, including hair growth supplements, electrolyte tablets and collagen peptides that improve skin elasticity, the company said. 

Anna Mohl, the chief executive of Nestlé’s health science division, said the company was simply keeping up with the changing needs of its customers.

It seems a pretty safe bet for Nestlé.

Even before any uplift from demand among weight-loss drug users, sales of vitamins and supplements have been on the rise. Figures from NIQ show that around £540m worth of vitamins, minerals and supplements were sold in supermarkets and discounters in the year to June. This is up from £501m the same period a year earlier and £474m the year before. 

Dietician Sophie Medlin, who works with supplement company Heights, says many in the market are expecting demand for these products to go even higher as more weight-loss drug patients hunt them out.

She has already seen some clients coming into her clinic who are visibly malnourished because their appetites have been so suppressed, affecting their skin, their hair and their nails. In some instances, people have been eating only crisps on weight-loss drugs because they cannot stomach making full meals. 

“If people are not eating enough fruits or vegetables, then their skin can become quite dull,” Medlin says.

More treatments likely

They can even start to lose their hair. More “Ozempic face” treatments from big players in nutrition and supplements seem inevitable.

“I think there would be a market for them,” Medlin says. 

Indeed, food makers and vitamin businesses are not alone in going after people struggling with this side-effect. 

Supplements may be able to make skin more elastic and brighter, but cosmetics businesses claim that they can offer more lasting solutions to some of the most obvious “Ozempic face” issues. 

Swiss skincare company Galderma earlier this year suggested its collagen treatments and fillers could help reverse people’s sunken cheeks after taking weight-loss drugs.

Already, sales of its injectables for aesthetics were up 19pc in the first quarter of 2024. However, Galderma chief executive Flemming Ornskov said weight-loss drugs were likely to provide a further boost, saying: “I think that will be another growth wave in that space, which I will make sure to capture.”

There is likely to be fierce competition among filler and cosmetic makers to tap this new market.

Allergan Aesthetics, which is part of US pharmaceutical company AbbVie, says it is also preparing to treat more patients who are unhappy with how much weight they have lost in their face after taking obesity drugs.

“The thing is, rapid weight loss will change the volume of the face and we’re starting to see those people seek support to deal with the gauntness,” says Djamshid Ghavami, the UK general manager of Allergan Aesthetics, which specialises in facial fillers.

“That will certainly only increase with time.”

Across London, aestheticians report seeing the early ripples of this. Dr David Jack, who has clinics in Harley Street and Belgravia, says he is starting to see not only international clients but also British customers coming in after having gone through significant weight loss.

“When it’s my regulars, it’s quite funny, actually,” he says. “They come in and they don’t volunteer that they’ve been on Wegovy, they just say they’ve been exercising a lot. But once you talk to them, they come clean.” 

Jack says there are slight nuances with treating these clients, particularly when they have dropped a large amount of weight.

“These people are probably slightly malnourished and so they might not respond as well to treatments such as fillers,” he says. At his clinics, these can cost between £550 and £650.

He takes a conservative approach when it comes to administering such treatments. Jack says there is a risk that people who come off weight-loss drugs could regain weight.

“And what you don’t want to have done is to have put too much filler in that they start to look puffy if they put that weight back on in their face.”

Last year, figures from Novo Nordisk suggested patients regained two thirds of their lost weight a year after stopping Wegovy. More recent studies have suggested there is a longer-term weight loss, with Novo Nordisk releasing separate figures in May showing that patients taking the treatment maintained an average of 10pc weight loss after four years. 

For early adopters of the drug in the UK such as Sandra, keeping the weight off is still the priority.

Sandra says she just wants to keep on track with her weight loss journey after finally making progress.

“I am not one for surgery or fillers, personally,” she says. She might be if she was “trying to look young” rather than simply stay healthy, she adds. 

Still, for an increasing number of people, it is not one thing or the other.