A dietary supplement improves facial photoaging and skin sebum, hydration and tonicity modulating serum fibronectin, neutrophil elastase 2, hyaluronic acid and carbonylated proteins.

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial looks at the intervention named in the title.

Excessive exposure to the sun can cause severe photoaging as early as the second decade of life resulting in a loss of physiological elastic fiber functions.

The researchers designed a first study to assess differences in facial skin pH, sebum, elasticity, hydration and tonicity and serum levels of fibronectin, elastin, neutrophil elastase 2, hyaluronic acid and carbonylated proteins between patients affected by facial photoaging and healthy controls.

Skin Tester was also used to assess the effect of VISCODERM Pearls on facial skin parameters and compared with placebo 2 weeks after the end of treatment.

Who Took Part

The study group was 30 women.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults, women only.

In the first study the researchers enrolled 30 women [age: 47.5 ± 1.6 years (mean ± standard error of the mean)] affected by moderate facial photoaging (4 cm ≤ Visual Analogue Scale (VAS)<7 cm) and 30 healthy women [age: 45.9 ± 1.6 years (mean ± standard error of the mean)].

Facial photoaging was assessed by VAS in the first cohort of patients affected by facial photoaging and healthy controls and, at baseline and 2 weeks after the end of treatment, in the second cohort of patients who underwent treatment with VISCODERM Pearls and placebo.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got the intervention named in the title and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the intervention group a baseline to be compared against.

Skin Tester was used to analyze differences in facial skin parameters between patients affected by facial photoaging and healthy controls.

Serum levels of fibronectin, elastin, neutrophil elastase 2, hyaluronic acid and carbonylated proteins were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in the first cohort of patients affected by facial photoaging and healthy controls and, at baseline and 2 weeks after the end of treatment, in the second cohort of patients who underwent treatment with VISCODERM Pearls and placebo.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Dietary Supplements, Elastin, Face, Fibronectins, Hyaluronic Acid, Leukocyte Elastase and Protein Carbonylation.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized and placebo-controlled study in 30 women.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 12 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2015 (Journal of photochemistry and photobiology. B, Biology), a journal based in Switzerland.

More context: all human trials.