Face time: New skin cream equals antiaging drug

Is the cosmetics industry about to get a much-needed face-lift? For the first time, a skin cream has been compared with tretinoin - the gold-standard anti-aging drug - and may be as good at reducing wrinkles.

The result - from a team led by Joseph Kaczvinsky at the firm Procter & Gamble, which makes Olay Pro-X - could challenge other cosmetics companies to back up similar claims.

The product is actually three over-the-counter skin creams, designed to alter the expression of genes involved in skin aging. Women using this for 24 weeks were as likely to see their wrinkles reduced as women on tretinoin, a drug for reducing skin-aging. The judges were unaware of who had used which product (British Journal of Dermatology).

"I'm hoping that the public will fall for hard data and base their decisions on that," says Richard Weller, a dermatologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, who was not involved in the study.

- New Scientist Magazine