Cysteamine Cream as a new skin depigmenting product

Presented at the Scientific Meeting:

European Academy of Dermatology (EADV), Annual Meeting. Prague (Praha), Czech Republic (Česká republika, Česko), 27 – 30 September 2012

Hsu.C. 1, Pourahmadi M.2, Ahmadi S. 2, Ali Mahdi H. 3

1:Centre Medical du Lignon, Geneva, Switzerland.

2: Jahrom University Medical school, Jahrom, Iran.

3: Global Dermatology Information Portal. Royal Bahrain Hospital, Bahrain

Introduction & Objectives
Cysteamine hydrochloride (beta-mercaptoethylamine hydrochloride) has been known to be a potent depigmenting molecule for over 5 decades. Despite its strong depigmenting effect, shown to be more important than hydroquinone in vivo, cysteamine was never developed into a depigmenting product due to the very offensive odor it produced in topical preparations. Recently, a new technology has become available permitting to considerably reduce the odor of cysteamine in cream conditions. Cysteamine cream made available as such, was evaluated in our studies for its depigmenting activity.

Material & Methods
40 female patients with epidermal melasma were treated daily for 6 weeks by cysteamine cream. Before-after dermatoscopic images were taken and chromametric evaluations were performed at the beginning and at the end of the trial.

Results
The depigmenting effect was confirmed by dermatoscopal and chromametric evaluations as well as the histological studies.

Cysteamine cream showed a considerable efficacy in the treatment of epidermal melasma confirmed by all evaluation methods. Previous cell culture studies confirmed that cysteamine acts through melanogenesis inhibition and not melanocytotoxicity to depigment cultured melanocytes.

Conclusions
Cysteamine is a non-melanocytotoxic and non-mutagenic molecule. Cysteamine cream, made usable with the new technology for the first time, has a strong depigmenting action in vivo and might be used as a depigmenting product in the near future.

Adapted for the online version