Assessment and Comparison of the Skin Irritation Potential of Five Plant Extracts Using In Vitro and In Vivo Methods

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to evaluate the skin irritant potential of five plant extracts for cosmetic use by in vitro and in vivo methods and to analyze the correlation between these different methods. Cell viability in fibroblasts and in the reconstructed human skin model was measured using the MTT assay to test cytotoxicity, and ELISA was used to detect IL-8 release. Finally, human skin patch tests were performed to validate the results obtained using the in vitro methods. The human patch results were compared with IL-8 release results in fibroblasts and the MTT assay findings in Episkin TM . The MTT assay in fibroblasts showed that the five plant extracts exhibited low cytotoxicity. The human patch results showed that four of the five plant extracts showed weak irritant potential. The MTT assay results in Episkin TM were best correlated with the human patch test results with a Spearman's correlation coefficient of 0.6156. The Spearman's correlation coefficient between the human patch test and IL-8 release results was 0.4617. The MTT assay in Episkin TM was more sensitive than the IL-8 release assay in fibroblasts to evaluate skin irritant potential. Our findings indicate that the five plant extracts are safe for cosmetic use.

Design and Characterization of Elastic Artificial Skin Containing Adenosine-Loaded Solid Lipid Nanoparticles for Treating Wrinkles

“…Moreover, EU Cosmetics Directive has prescribed the use of alternative methods to animal testing [ 55 , 56 , 57 ]. Among the various models of reconstructed human epidermis, which mimic the biochemical and physiological characteristics of the human epidermis, the SkinEthic RHE model presents a histological morphology analogous to in vivo human tissue [ 56 , 58 ]. Therefore, in this study, we evaluated skin irritation and permeation using the SkinEthic RHE tissue model.…”