Claim Substantiation for Food Supplements

Nutritional supplements for the purpose of achieving an external skin care benefit or for increasing protection of the skin from environmental toxins are becoming more and more interesting to the cosmetics and food industry.

Whether it is the alleviation of the signs of skin aging, a strengthening of nail and hair growth, improvement of the barrier function or even the skin’s state of hydration, the declared efficacy must always be demonstrated by valid study results. If we compare the bioavailability of micronutrients in the target organ of the skin with the possibilities of the effect of topically applied cosmetics, it becomes obvious that there are special demands both on the sensitivity of the testing methods and on the design of the testing itself.

Therefore, a sufficiently large number of participants, the inclusion of placebo groups and a study period of several months are usually indispensable for the study design. As for the inclusion and exclusion criteria, concomitant medications, existing metabolic disorders and the nutritional habits of the subjects become even more important than for topical treatments.
 
At proDERM, all these requirements are taken into consideration in the context of comprehensive food supplement studies. proDERM also has a variety of sensitive imaging analysis techniques at its disposal for demonstrating cosmetic effects in these studies.