TESTING
21
Designing meaningful test results for sensitive skin
Dr. Sarah Risse, Dr. Imke Goellner, Dr. Timo Ulrichs, Tim Meyersick-Puechel, Marcel Voss - Dermatest ABSTRACT
Sensitive skin, characterized by heightened reactivity to environmental stimuli like certain cosmetic products, affects a considerable and significantly increasing portion of the global population. This article summarises dermatological findings from recent years in relation to demographic distributions of sensitive skin and the development of surveys as a tool for safety studies. The analysis is based on more than 16,700 product tests conducted by Dermatest in the years 2020-2023 and the analysis of more than 5,000 data sets from the subject database. The results show an increase in testing of products for sensitive skin or skin diseases and the associated need for suitable test designs for safe products. Therefore, Dermatest is developing new test designs as reliable alternatives to established tests: Sensitive Seal and HypoSense®. The aim is to take a holistic view on products with meaningful test results for sensitive skin. As affected consumers are obliged to choose products for daily use like cosmetics, meaningful and significant safety studies will become ever more inevitable.
Sensitive skin is an increasingly recognized condition within dermatology and defined by its low tolerance to everyday products, environmental and internal factors. Usually, it is without obvious physical signs but symptoms can develop as a result of certain triggers.
Those are mostly unpleasant sensations
varying from pruritus, stinging, burning, pain to tingling sensations. Similar to the mechanism of allergic atopic dermatitis, sensitive skin reacts on a wide variety of external and internal stimuli that normally should not provoke such sensations.1-3 The condition is not easy diagnosed as
it shows no visible signs in standard clinical examinations and is often only determined by patient self-report. Furthermore, specific body regions such as the face, scalp and genital area can be affected differently,4-5
and can overlap
with conditions like atopic dermatitis, psoriasis and rosacea.4, 6-9
As not only symptoms but
also stimuli vary widely among individuals, the management of the condition is usually also rather complicated. Nevertheless, more and more people
suffer from sensitive skin and the topic is of gaining importance. Understanding who is affected by sensitive skin is crucial for effective management and product development.
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Anyone can suffer from sensitive skin. There are demographic studies indicating that sensitive skin can occur across all ages and genders but shows a higher incidence in females.10 As internal factors, psychological (e.g. and hormonal (e.g. menstrual cycle)
stress),11
factors can play an important role for different or changing skin sensations.12,13
External or
environmental factors such as pollution, climate changes, and lifestyle choices also significantly define and alter skin conditions in addition.10 Triggers of sensitive skin are also
predominantly linked to specific ingredients in cosmetic and skincare products, personal care products and household products.14,15
As such,
understanding these factors and testing for product compatibility is of utmost importance. People with sensitive skin are restricted to
the usage of daily products and therefore show specific shopping behaviours. They not only avoid specific ingredients but also rely on skin related claims.16
Claims like
‘suitable for sensitive skin’ or ‘hypoallergenic’ are thus widely used to improve selling rates of products. Yet it is of great importance and responsibility to keep the trust of consumers in these claims. Therefore, specific analyses and studies should underly them.
To prove the compatibility on sensitive skin,
diverse dermatological assays with different significances have been developed over the past decades. In order to obtain meaningful results on tolerability of tested products, it is particularly vital to select the right test subjects. As the diagnosis is mostly based on self-
evaluation, a great deal of experience, routine and established assessments are essential here. In parallel, the safety of the test subjects must be guaranteed to exclude any ethical concerns. In the past different approaches for skin sensitisation assays like the human maximisation test, the single challenge patch test and the human repeated insult patch test (HRIPT) have been developed. The first two assays are no longer used due to validity and also their risk. HRIPT still exists, although it is viewed very critically from an ethical point of view because test subjects are exposed to the risk of developing a lifelong allergy. In addition, results of the HRIPT are not
comparable since various different protocols are hidden behind this term. The only common part is that the product is applied to the skin multiple times to assess for cumulative irritation or sensitization.17,18 Since 1978, Dermatest has conducted
July 2024 PERSONAL CARE
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