”Thank you for visiting my blog site, DrMaas.com. I encourage you to take a look at our website at Maasclinic.com where a lot of these answers are in more detail and there’s a written textural information as well as some slide demonstration,so hopefully you get a chance to visit those.
Today a patient actually came in and asked about Latisse, and Latisse is bimatoprost, a molecule that has been around for some time now. It was actually interestingly discovered as a result of people being treated with drops in their eye for glaucoma.
Latisse is a product manufactured and distributed by Allergen, the same people who make Botox, and it is an eyelash enhancer, that’s how it’s been approved by the FDA. It’s applied with a small brush at the base of the lashes, it’s not placed in the eye, but as I said before it was discovered through glaucoma.
Those patients that were using it for high pressure in their eye or glaucoma were noticing a significant increase in the fullness, darkness of their lashes and actually the nurses that caught on to this were beginning to put drops of the molecule into their mascara and getting fuller lashes. This was picked on by a couple of a non-pharmaceutical companies and placed in their products in different name brands from the different companies and of course later on the FDA stepped in and told them they had to remove this t because it’s a controlled substance so it’s a prescription only type of medicine. It can be purchased in, at least in some states, directly from a doctor’s office. In other state that has to be purchased through a pharmacy with a prescription.
The mechanism of action is not real clear, we know that it prolongs the life cycle of the hair follicle that is producing the eye lashes and the data shows a 30% increase in darkness length and thickening the actual diameter, the hair shaft that’s produced with use over a three-month period. So one has to, really to see that full effect, use Latisse for the three-month period. It’s applied once a day at the base of the lashes or the little brush that’s provided in the kit.
Latisse has a new 5ml or 5 milliliterbottle which will last the full three full three-months. I think once people get to the full correction in terms of restoration of their lashes, in many patients by the way and older patients, this is about lash restoration. Like most hair on our body, at least on our head and other areas where we want hair, we have a tendency to thin and lose the hair with age and so this really in many ways is an anti-aging treatment, but many people have thin or who just want fuller lashes, there Is a reason for mascaras use, and for those people we’ll see the full effect in about three months and once you’ve gotten to the effect that you want, I have my patients back it down to using it 2 or 3 days a week to maintain the lashes as they’d like them.
I’ve had patients that with full use actually need to trim their lashes, that maybe a little more than is necessary, so again we’ll get them to where we like and then they’ll stay on them.
There are a lot of questions about Latisse and its effects on the eye obviously was used directly in the eye so the chances of it causing any eye damage is infinitesimally small, tested for those reasons.
There is a small group of patients with light green eyes with brown flex, at least from the original study that show that they can get darkening of the iris, the green part of their eye with use, if it gets directly in the eye, but remember this was with the original product that was used in the eye for glaucoma and when we’re using it in lashes there’s a very little that’s going to actually get in the eye. It is nonetheless report as a side effect.
Now with that said, Brook Shield is the face model for Latisse and she has the classic green eyes, so it been used successfully and I think its well it is a known risk. It is a very, very small one even for very light green eyed people with the brown flex in the eye for iris darkening. Hasn’t been reported in blue eyed people and certainly it shouldn’t be an issue if applied correctly.
Lastly, with the dangers, I think the one thing that we have seen is that it will cause hair growth in other areas. We’ve had it applied where people are not real careful of the base of lashes They’ll touch their cheeks and if you have hair follicles along your cheek area, I’ve had patients report increase dense of the hair along the cheek, so you want to be careful to keep the latisse where you’re applying it. It’s very important conceptually. On the skin, it can be slightly an irritant, so it can cause some hyperpigmentation or darkening of the skin as a result of that inflammation and especially in darker skin patients.
So again this has to do more with applying it correctly and using very scarce amounts. In some patients I’ll actually have them use just a cue tip and put a few drops at the base of a cue tip and that way you’re not really spreading and on the skin itself. The net is the Latisse is a very successful drug or a topical applicant and has shown very good results and very good retention with people using it. I encourage if you have any questions do reach out to the MaasClinic.com site where you can find out more information. As always Corey S. Maas MDTM, happy to hear from you, on Looking Your Best.”
