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Prion transfer through skin care and microneedling products containing growth factors and cytokines
I am concerned about prions being transmitted through skin care and microneedling products containing human-derived growth factors and cytokines. What are others’ opinions on this risk?
Below are some findings that contribute to my concern.
1. Scrapie prions have been transmitted through the abraded skin of mice.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8758004?dopt=Abstract&holding=npg
http://www.jleukbio.org/content/early/2012/02/28/jlb.12116332. There have been many cases of CJD transmission through cadaveric-derived human growth hormone injections; this includes subcutaneous injection depths.
3. There have been a few cases of CJD transmission from corneal transplants.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3358170/
4. Aerolised scrapie prions have infected mice.
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10 Replies
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I think it’s a really dangerous area to get involved with. I am aware that various types of human growth hormone are available in the Far East. Or you can do like the aged vocalist, C___ and replace all your blood every once in a while with nice fresh teenage blood. Imagine yourself saying to your health inspector from the government, “Oh yes we use human growth hormone here.”
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Interesting concerns. I hadn’t thought of it. I know when I was formulating around the time of the mad cow disease scare we avoided using any animal protein in our products. Since ingredients like proteins and “human growth hormones” are just claims ingredients with no measurable effect, it seems reasonable to avoid using them.
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gee, where would you have access to subcutaneous HGH in the cosmetics world?
As in: without prescription?There’s a cosmetic medicine procedure where you take blood from a person, centrifuge the plasma out and then subcutaneously inject the plasma over the desired area of the body.
There is no doubt as to the efficiency, however, the idea here is that you inject the person with their own plasma to avoid the problems mentioned above. -
I appreciate the above replies. Human growth factors in cosmetics seem to be very popular at the moment. Hundreds of skin care companies are using them: Skin Medica, Topix, Osmosis, Medik8, AQ Skin Solutions, Regenica, Lifeline, Neocutis, Cellese to name a few.
I think the research is good behind stem cell derived growth factors for skin rejuvenation. But I worry that using these human growth factors on the skin, especially during microneedling, is not safe.
BartJ, microneedling solutions containing human growth factors are currently sold, even for at home use, e.g. the product https://cellese.com/store/product/anteage-home-microneedling-solution/.
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Skin/blood derived/bioidentical hormonal factors are the most powerful active ingredients. The topic is not going away because that topic is the future.
All restorative and anti-aging medicine concepts rely on two factors:
- inflammation reduction
- hormonal manipulation
To a large extent most of the technology already exists, it’s just not massively developed because there isn’t as much money in anti-aging as it is in something like type 2 diabetes.Your worry is quite well founded though. I could talk to you for ages about use of hormonal topicals and S/C products but they’re all _pharmaceuticals_. All procedures carried out would be done with quality sterile equipment, etc.
If you’re writing this as a client/patient, I’m happy to discuss this further and point you in the right direction. All of those products you see crossing into the cosmetics world are available in the healthcare environment, where you have guaranties that they were made under proper conditions.
Topical and S/C hormonals are nothing new at all. They’re used for a variety of conditions, it all boils down to have a dermatologist or even a general practitioner prescribe them for you with a cosmetic purpose.In my personal professional opinion, I am happy to see any case of unregulated access to effective personal agents, where regulation applies to manufacturing conditions.
The more people have to rely on their own judgement, the more responsible they become overall. But that product HAS TO originate in a sterile manufacturing plant. -
I agree with you that growth factors are good for skin rejuvenation. Well, certain growth factors: those from adult youth bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. I think the other alternatives are not good:
- Fibroblasts (used by SkinMedica) are weak producers of growth factors.
- Adipose (fat) stem cells produce too many inflammatory growth factors.
- PRP has very strong inflammatory growth factors Il-1, Il-6, TNF-α.I can’t get past the safety concerns with using human growth factors though.
I know human GFs are used to treat certain medical conditions where the benefits outweigh the risks. For these applications, recombinant techniques are used and these minimise the risk of transmitting prion diseases. For skin care companies (such as SkinMedica and Cellese) that produce their own GF cocktails from stem cell / fibroblast media, how can I know they are utilising recombinant techniques?
Even if the risk of prion transfer through topical human GFs is small, prion diseases are 100% fatal. Also worth mentioning is that prions are resistant to most routine sterilisation and disinfection techniques.
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I had a chat with my friend who performs the plasma based procedure I mentioned above. She’s an experienced practitioner and does not use the products you mentioned above for safety concerns similar to yours.
On the other hand the platelet-rich plasma S/C therapy is safe in itself and has a proven track record.
I’ve personally seen the photo diaries of patients undergoing this. There’s no doubt as to the efficacy. -
Thanks for your input. I very much appreciate you discussing this with me.
I think microneedling at sufficient depth produces good results, and the short term inflammation it causes is overshadowed by the positive effects of later stages of healing.
But I think that applying PRP during microneedling would produce too many strong inflammatory cytokines (excessive inflammation), which would be pro-ageing not anti-ageing. Any perceived improvement of PRP over microneedling without PRP could be caused by slight swelling induced by inflammation. Swelling will lessen wrinkles and make the skin appear plumper - but long term inflammatory swelling is pro-ageing.
Having said all this, I am not convinced whether PRP is good or bad, and would like to see some comparative studies done on the long term skin rejuvenation effects of micro-needling with and without PRP. -
My pleasure, I’ve had countless conversations with patients regarding inflammatory problems. My feeling has always been that there’s a bit of an intellectual barrier to treating inflammation.
Something like type 2 diabetes is pretty straightforward to cure IF you can actually understand what’s happening to your body. And so, sadly, the T2DM is primarily a condition prevalent among lower educated people.One thing I’d like to point out here is that inflammation is often divided into the chronic type and the acute type.
Every single debilitating long term condition carries an element of chronic inflammation (diabetes, asthma, eczema, MS, cancer, aetherosclerosis, diseases of the gut, arthritis and so on…) without exception.
Learning the causes behind that type of inflammatory response would be better served by articles on the web than me writing a quick post…On the other hand, you’ve got the acute inflammation as a response to trauma or infection. This serves a reparative function primarily and does not add up to long term inflammatory plasma markers levels.
In what you said:
“ think microneedling at sufficient depth produces good results, and the short term inflammation it causes is overshadowed by the positive effects of later stages of healing.”
There’s nothing to overshadow. The needle traumatises the skin causing the short term inflammation, which in turn starts the process of skin proliferation and cell turnover.
You want the acute inflammation applied in intervals. It is what jump starts your skin.It’s best exemplified in bodybuilding… A power lifter/bodybuilder traumatises muscle groups forcing them to repair themselves. They train a select muscle, then let it rest for days and train other muscle groups in meanwhile.
This way they juggle microinjuries. A professional lifter is in a state of permanent acute inflammation that is apllied to and relieved from chosen body parts.And yet weight training will reduce plasma inflammatory markers, not increase them.
Microneedling allows you to access those same cellular principles by making the skin ‘grow’ just like weight lifting makes the muscles grow.What I’m trying to get across here is that you cannot increase an acute response to the point of it becoming chronic. It’s not a difference of magnitude, they have different physiological origins.
And it looks like there are some studies out there comparing PRP to bare microneedling:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26748836P.S. btw, long distance running makes you age faster, no matter what nike and reebok say
bodybuilding/microneedling - running/sunbathing <- i’m sure you can tell where the difference lies -
Thanks again for your comments.
Acute inflammation can develop into chronic inflammation if the acute stage is not resolved. So with regards to microneedling, perhaps the addition of the strong inflammatory signals in PRP could hinder the usual course of skin healing, leading to the formation of fibrotic tissue. Initially, maybe the skin would look fine, but over time I can’t imagine that the worsening fibrosis would yield aesthetic results.
I saw the study you posted above, but I’m looking for a longer study duration.
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