Towards the support of “positive ageing” by cosmetics: The improvement of self-perception through the topical application of a giant exopolysaccharide

The aging paradigm of cosmetics industry is changing, to better fit societal evolution. World is getting older and people live better, expecting to keep as healthy and active as possible. Getting away from the traditional “anti-ageing” perspective, current societal, scientific and industrial developments are oriented toward “positive ageing”, with well-being and positive emotions as core variables. Henceforth, as a significant addition to existing biological approaches, cosmetic industry looks for reliable methods to substantiate emotional benefits provided by bioactive ingredients. After the identification of specific glycobiological interactions profile of an high-molecular-weight exopolysaccharide (EPS) by a lectin array technology, this double-blind “versus placebo” study aimed the quantitative assessment of the emotional benefits provided by this EPS with measurable parameters such as prosody (i.e. the vocal parameters conveying emotional information) and verbatim (i.e. the lexical content spontaneously produced by volunteers). This study revealed that the long-term daily use of a formula containing 1% of this cosmetic EPS is associated with a significant improvement of the two skin parameters assessed clinically, and self-perception related emotions.