Assessment of the Impact of a Cosmetic Product on the Skin Microbiota
Melbec Microbiology are excited to announce a new set of testing focused on looking at how personal care and cosmetics products affect the skin microbiome.
The human skin microbiota is a complex and evolving area of skin and cosmetic microbiology. At Melbec we can support the development of Microbiota safe/friendly products using a sensible stepped approach.
1. Microbiological Sterility
The first stage is to ensure that a product does not contain pathogenic organisms which are present in the cosmetic as contaminants.
2. Assessment of Microorganism balance
Microbiota friendly cosmetics should not significantly alter the balance between skin bacteria eg. Staphylococcus epidermis and pathogens eg Staphylococcus aureus. Dysbiosis such as this is associated with skin diseases such as eczema.
For this stage of testing the ratio of bacteria are assessed in the presence of the test product compared to a control model.
3. Diversity
A healthy microbiota is often associated with a diverse microbial community, whereas communities dominated by a small number of microorganisms may be associated with dysbiosis and disease.
This stage of testing assesses the impact on microbial diversity attributable to the test product and takes into account the body area and skin type.
4. Growth
A Microbiota-safe or friendly product should not adversely impact the ability of the skin microorganisms to grow and flourish. Different in vitro skin models can be used to assess the impact of test products on microbial growth.
5. Metagenomic profiling
If you wish to advertise microbiota formulations on television or if you want to have more in-depth data on the impact of your product on the skin microbiota we can use metagenomic sequencing and analysis using bioinformatic software.
This testing uses volunteers, and we assess the impact of the test product on the skin at the relevant body sites and on the entire microbiota.
Get in contact with one of our technical team to discuss how we can help to support your product claims for Microbiome friendly products
