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Anti-Ageing Cream As Good As Drug
at Reducing Wrinkles
The cosmetics industry
could be on the brink of a much-needed facelift. For the first time, an anti-wrinkle cosmetic has been compared with the
gold-standard prescription drug for skin ageing — and appears to be just as effective at reducing wrinkle depth.
As well as being good news for people who want to look younger for longer, the result — from US-based researchers at
the firm Procter & Gamble — could up the pressure on cosmetics companies to offer proof of the claims they make
about their products.
To develop the cosmetic, which consists of a regimen of three creams sold as Olay Pro-X,
P&G used DNA microarrays to screen a range of existing cosmetic ingredients and identify those that changed the
expression of a number of genes involved in skin ageing. After eight weeks, the women using Pro-X showed a significant
improvement in the appearance of their wrinkles compared with those using tretinoin.
The women also tolerated
Pro-X better than tretinoin, which caused irritation in some of the women. Some of the volunteers were followed for a further
16 weeks, after which both treatments were judged to have improved the appearance of wrinkles to about the same extent.
