Instant face-lifts ‘kill your skin cells’

A CHEMICAL used in cosmetic products promising an “instant face-lift” makes wrinkles disappear by damaging skin cells, Canadian researchers report.

“From our point of view the cells are altered. They stop dividing, they stop secreting, and after 24 hours a certain proportion of them die,” said Dr Francois Marceau of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Quebec.

Dr Marceau, a cell biologist, said he was reluctant to recommend that these products not be used. However, the findings made it clear that more research was needed on how these and similar products work.

“I don’t want to scare people,” he added. “The risk is not probably very big, but in my opinion it hasn’t been measured accurately.”

Dr Marceau and his team tested 2-dimethylamino-ethanol (DMAE) in cultured rabbit and human skin cells.

As the researchers predicted, applying the product caused a massive and rapid swelling of the cells as they filled with DMAE and water, leading to a thickening of the epidermal layer. They also found DMAE was toxic to the skin cells.

This “face-lift in a jar” chemical was certainly safer than a real face-lift or Botox injections, Dr Marceau noted, but the fact that DMAE and other “cosmeceuticals” weren’t considered drugs meant they were sold with minimal information about how they work.

“We know far less of these chemicals than of any new drug that has been marketed in the last 30 years. These chemicals should be treated as drugs, and many studies, such as of mode of action and toxicology, should be completed before it is marketed,” Dr Marceau said.