Cysteamine cream as a new skin depigmenting product

Cysteamine cream as a new skin depigmenting product

Hsu C.1, Ahmadi S.2, Pourahmad M.3,  Ali Mahdi H.4,.

1      Centre Medical du Lignon Geneva, Switzerland

2, 3 :     Jahrom Universty Medical school, Jahrom, Iran.

4:     Global Dermatology Information Portal, Royal Bahrain Hospital, Bahrain

• Cysteamine hydrochloride (β-mercaptoethylamine hydrochloride) has been known to be a potent depigmenting molecule for 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 was evaluated in our studies for its depigmenting activity.

• 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.
• Cysteamine cream showed a considerable efficacy in the treatment of epidermal melasma confirmed by both evaluation methods.

• Previous cell culture studies confirmed that cysteamine acts through melanogenesis inhibition and not melanocytotoxicity to depigment cultured melanocytes.
• Conclusion: Cysteamine is a non-melanocytotoxic and non-mutagenic molecule. Cysteamine cream, made usable by the new technology for the first time, has a strong depigmenting action in vivo and might be used as a depigmenting product in near future.

September 2012 – 17th Meeting of the European Society for Pigment Cell Research (ESPCR)  – Geneva, Switzerland

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Adapted for the online version