Study uses novel technology to show skin lightness decreases with age

12-Oct-2015 - Last updated on 13-Oct-2015 at 10:19 GMT

A new study using a novel technology to analyse the skin has demonstrated that as we get older our skin lightness decreases and there is an increase in dyspigmentation, and this could lead to futue analysis of the skin for cosmetic developments.

A collaboration between the Clinical Research Centre for Hair and Skin Science at the Universitätsmedizin Berlin and Canfield Scientific from New Jersey, used clinical scoring and the RBX-Brown transformation-based pigmentation indices to demonstrate age-related changes in the facial colour and dyspigmentation of fair-skinned Caucasian females.

Their research, published in the International Journal of Cosmetic Science, showed an increase in dyspigmentation was found and hat the validity of hyper- and hypopigmentation indices and overall pigmentation intensity was supported.

The researchers note that RBX transformation-based pigmentation indices, which is a novel technology that can represent skin images in terms of melanin and haemoglobin components, might be applied in future studies to complement or substitute clinical evaluation.

Investigation

The objective of this study was to investigate age-related changes in facial pigmentation and dyspigmentation in subjects of skin phototypes II–III and to develop and test parameters for quantifying dyspigmentation.

The skin melanin system is affected by ageing, resulting in dyspigmentation with associated clinical and psychosocial consequences. In dark skinned phenotypes, broad evidence is available, whereas little is known about pigmentary changes in fair-skinned Caucasians.

In their test, 24 healthy female subjects were recruited in three distinct age groups (30–40, 50–60, 70–80 years).

Skin colour was measured by Mexameter and Chromameter, and skin dyspigmentation was measured by clinical evaluation and newly developed image-processing parameters on the cheeks and the forehead.

The reliability of the clinical evaluation was investigated by intraclass correlation coefficients between three raters, and the validity of the dyspigmentation parameters was analysed by bivariate correlations with related measures.

The study found that skin lightness decreases as we get older, and clinical dyspigmentation scores showed positive associations with chronological age ranging between 0.452 and 0.606.

The RBX-Brown transformation-based hyperpigmentation and hypopigmentation indices also increased with age, whereas the overall pigmentation intensity decreased with age at the cheeks.

The image analysis-based parameters showed strong associations with the clinical scores and related measurements.