An Approach to the Development of Standardized Evaluation Methods for Cosmetics and Skin Care Products

摘要

The skin diseases have never ceased to stop to expand in the field of dermatology, because there are many skin conditions such as portwine stain, nevus of Ota, acne, male pattern baldness and even wrinkles and aged spots that do not cause any harm if they developed in the internal organs, in addoition to the fact that there still continue appearing the groups of invisible dermatoses such as atopic xerosis and senile xerosis whose skin lesions are sometimes hard to detect clinically. With the advent of the aging society, particularly after the demonstration of the efficacy of topical tretinoin on photoaged skin, the part of its field has totally emerged with that of cosmetology. Recently in the field on clinical medicine, the evaluation of effectiveness of various drugs has been performed in an evidence-based fashion. For this purpose, the evaluation of the symptoms and signs should be performed in a reproducible way, enabling to analyze the obtained data statistically. For the skin conditions that constitutes a target of various skin care products and cosmetics, delicate changes occurring in the skin with the treatment should be evaluated by the use of various bioengineering methods that have recently greatly advanced. In Europe, the establihsment of the European group for efficacy measurements on cosmetics and typical product (EEMCO) has enabled the introduction of various guidelines requried for the substantiation of effectiveness of cosmetics. In other areas of the world, especially in Japan, the establishment of such a system is eagerly required for consumers, who at present, can assess possible efficacy of such skin agents only from various advertisements without knowing it they might the exaggerated praise, as well as for cosmetic scientists who are conscientiously and hard working to develop as effective products as possible.