Hormone Estradiol Rubbed on Aging Skin Seems to Help
Just in Places the Sun Don’t Shine
No significant changes in arms or faces of these 75
year old men and women
Sept.
15, 2008 – Senior citizens who want to protect their skin from aging in
places where the sun don’t shine, might try rubbing on the hormone estradiol, which is primarily used to treat vaginal dryness. A test
using senior citizens with an average age of 75 found, however, that the
therapy does not bring skin on the face back to life.
Applying estradiol to skin protected from the sun
appears to stimulate production of the protein collagen in elderly men
and women, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of
Dermatology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. It may not, however,
have the same effect on sun-exposed skin, such as the face or arms.
As skin ages, its function is reduced, it becomes
more fragile and wound healing is compromised. On areas of the body that
are typically not covered by clothing, long-term exposure to the sun’s
ultraviolet rays causes skin to look prematurely old, a process known as
photo-aging.
Natural aging and photo-aging share biochemical
features, including a reduction in collagen, the major protein that
forms the structure of skin’s inner layer.
Laure Rittié, Ph.D., and colleagues at the
University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, recruited 70 healthy
volunteers (40 postmenopausal women and 30 men, average age 75 years)
with photodamaged skin.
For two weeks, volunteers were treated with
estradiol three times every other day both on sun-protected areas near
the hip and photodamaged skin on the forearm; a 4-millimeter biopsy
(tissue sample) was taken from each treatment area 24 hours after the
last treatment.
Participants also applied estradiol, incorporated
into moisturizing cream, to their faces twice per day during the two
weeks. A 2-millimeter biopsy was taken from the crow’s-foot area near
the eye before and 24 hours after the last treatment.
After the two-week treatment period, applying
estradiol to the sun-protected hip skin increased levels of collagen and
other compounds that promote its production in the women and, to a
lesser extent, in the men.
“Surprisingly, no significant changes in production
were observed in women or men after two-week estradiol treatment of
photo-aged forearm or face skin, despite similar expression of estrogen
receptors [protein molecules to which estrogen binds] in aged and
photo-aged skin,” the authors write.
“These findings suggest that menopause-associated
estrogen decline is involved in reduced collagen production in
sun-protected skin,” the authors write.
“Because photo-aging is superimposed on natural
aging in sun-exposed areas of the skin, our results suggest that
alterations induced by long-term sun exposure hinder the ability of
topical estradiol to stimulate collagen production in aged human skin in
vivo.”
Editor's Note: This study was supported in
part by a grant from Pfizer Inc. (Dr. Fisher). Co-author Dr. Voorhees
was a consultant for Pfizer Inc. and received consulting payments.
Keep up with the latest news for senior citizens, baby
boomers
Sept.
15, 2008 – Senior citizens who want to protect their skin from aging in
places where the sun don’t shine, might try rubbing on the hormone estradiol, which is primarily used to treat vaginal dryness. A test
using senior citizens with an average age of 75 found, however, that the
therapy does not bring skin on the face back to life.