BEAUTY may be no more than skin-deep, but many of us
think that leaves plenty of room for improvement. So a new dietary
treatment that promises to shrink wrinkles from inside the skin is bound
to be big news when it is launched next month.
The makers of the three-a-day capsules say they use blends of natural food extracts to
activate genes that improve skin tone - and early results suggest they may be on the right track.
If the results stand up to scrutiny,
the capsules will be the first anti-wrinkle treatment to show evidence
of combating wrinkling from the deeper layers of skin. But they will not
be the first to win scientific backing - some skin creams have been
shown in peer-reviewed journals to help reduce wrinkles (
British Journal of Dermatology, DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2133.2009.09436.x).
Independent researchers contacted by New Scientist
said that the preliminary results are intriguing and commended the team
developing the capsules for conducting a double-blind trial - testing
them against a placebo with neither researchers nor recipients knowing
until afterwards who had received what. They say they will be sceptical,
however, until a peer-reviewed journal has published the results in
full, and acknowledge that attempts to erase the signs of ageing don't
sit well with everyone.
The "gene food" treatment is the work
of John Casey's team at the laboratories of Unilever in Sharnbrook, UK.
The multinational food, cosmetics and household products company
commissioned four separate research groups to test the capsules, and 480
women in the UK, France and Germany who have passed the menopause took
part in the trials.
New Scientist has seen results
that show that in 14 weeks, "crow's feet" wrinkles by the corner of the
eye became on average 10 per cent shallower in recipients of the
capsules, shrinking by 30 per cent in the best responders (
see photos). The wrinkles of women who received a placebo did not change significantly in depth.
In one of the two French studies,
researchers also took 4-millimetre-deep biopsies from 110 women before
and after treatment to study the production of collagen - a protein that
is a key structural component of skin. Antibodies that stain tissue red
where new collagen is produced revealed that after treatment a fifth of
recipients had significantly more fresh collagen in the deepest skin
layer - the dermis - than those who had received a placebo. More
sensitive tests will be needed to ascertain any differences in the
remaining biopsies, says Casey. Partial results were presented at the
Society for Investigative Dermatology meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, last year; Casey says that the full data will now be sent to journals for peer review.
So how do these capsules work? As
women age and oestrogen production drops off towards menopause, enzymes
called proteases become more active, reducing the sponginess of skin by
clearing away collagen faster than it can be replaced. An oestrogen
receptor that aids the generation of collagen also becomes less active.
The two effects combine to make skin less pliable and more wrinkly.
Casey's team used skin cultures and
gene activity tests to ascertain the effect of certain natural food
extracts on "master" genes, which orchestrate the behaviour of lots of
other genes - in this case, those involved in
collagen synthesis.
The blend that activated these genes most strongly included vitamins C
and E plus isoflavones from soya, lycopene from tomatoes and omega-3
polyunsaturated acids from fish oil
(see "What's in an anti-wrinkle capsule?").
Unilever plans to launch the product
next month in 44 spas that it co-owns in the UK, Spain and Canada. It
does not need approval to sell the capsules from these countries'
regulatory authorities because the extracts they contain are already in
use and the company does not claim that the capsules benefit health.
Although long-term tests have not been
carried out, Gail Jenkins, another member of the team, recommends
taking three capsules per day for at least three months; at this dose,
she says, adverse side effects are unlikely. If a person stopped taking
the capsules, the normal ageing process would probably restore deeper
wrinkles.
When
New Scientist sent the
preliminary data to independent dermatologists, they gave a guarded
welcome. "The data are somewhat sparse, but they do appear to have done a
pretty comprehensive study," says
Christopher Griffiths,
professor of dermatology at the University of Manchester, UK, and
co-author of a 2009 study confirming that an anti-ageing cream produced
by Boots, a British pharmacy chain, had anti-wrinkle effects (
British Journal of Dermatology, DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2133.2009.09216.x).
Griffiths said he would be "unconvinced" until he had seen all the
data, but was intrigued by the apparent repair of deep rather than
superficial wrinkles. "I know of no other study that has shown this
before," he says. A likely explanation, says Casey, is that creams
penetrate only the top layer of skin - the epidermis. The contents of
the capsules, by contrast, reach the dermis, stimulating the production
of collagen in deeper layers.
Richard Weller,
a dermatologist at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, UK, applauded Unilever
for testing the product against a placebo and for saying it will publish
the results in full. "What matters is the clinical data, and they show
there are reduced wrinkles in the treated group," he says. "I'm not
aware of any [other] oral treatments that do this."
David Sarwer
of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, says that the results
are encouraging but "we need a number of studies in this area, with
similar results and published in the peer-reviewed literature, before we
have a sufficient body of evidence to suggest that these supplements
positively impact facial appearance".
Nichola Rumsay
of the Centre for Appearance Research at the University of the West of
England in Bristol says that anti-wrinkle capsules are more
psychologically benign than facial surgery, but they still reinforce the
message that wrinkles are bad. "We should be accepting wrinkles
gracefully. Someone should develop a pill to stop people worrying about
their appearance," she says. "That would make people a lot happier."
What's in an anti-wrinkle capsule?
The concept behind "gene foods" is to put back into
modern diets the ingredients from berries, nuts and fruits that were
abundant in the food of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Evidence is
mounting that many of these ingredients have profound effects on master
genes that keep tissue and organs healthy, reducing inflammation and
damage.
Unilever's blend includes
isoflavones from soya. These activate oestrogen receptors that trigger the skin to make collagen
Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, DOI: 10.1016/s0273-2300(03)00091-6). Another ingredient in the capsules is
omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids taken from fish oil, which activate a master gene called
PPAR that is also involved in collagen synthesis (
Journal of Lipid Research,
DOI: 10.1194/jlr.m800614-jlr200).
The other ingredients are
vitamin E,
vitamin C and
lycopene,
all known to promote tissue health. "We put them all together in a
single product, and there are about a dozen genetic mechanisms at work,"
says Casey.
Preliminary results from Unilever suggest that
activating the master genes raises the activity of several other genes
that make proteins vital for good skin tone, such as elastin, decorin
and several anti-inflammatory molecules.
– may not be what it seems.
