One particular category benefitting from the current booming skin care market is antiaging. With media emphasis on the importance of skin that looks youthful and radiant, a growing number of women are asking for skin care products that will help reduce the signs of aging. Accordingly, this sector has seen a significant expansion in products claiming to tighten and firm the skin. One recent report describes how skin tightening claims are becoming more overt on product packaging, and are increasingly supported by scientific trials.1 As a result, it is becoming more important for manufacturers to be able to differentiate their products and substantiate the claims they make.
Extensive work recently undertaken by International Specialty Products (ISP) has focused on quantifying the effectiveness of skin care products by testing them on the skin of human panelists. Using a texture analyzer to measure the tightness of the skin both before and after the application of selected treatments, this work shows the potential of texture analysis instrumentation in testing the efficacy of skin care products and substantiating skin tightening claims.
