01.04.18
US Patent No. 9,808,408 B2; Procter & Gamble has been awarded a patent for a method of identifying a rinse off personal care composition as effective for improving the stratum corneum barrier in a selected population of subjects. The method entails generating one or more control skin profiles for two or more subjects in a select population of subjects wherein the subjects in the select population have dry or damaged skin; contacting at least a portion of skin of the subjects with a rinse-off test composition, rinsing the test composition off the portion of skin, extracting one or more skin samples from each of the subjects, and generating from the extracted samples one or more test profiles for the subjects; and comparing the one or more test profiles to the one or more control profiles and identifying the rinse-off test composition as effective for improving the stratum corneum barrier in a human subject who is a member of a selected population of subjects if the test profile is directionally shifted away from the control profile and shows a decrease in one or more inflammatory cytokines, an increase in one or more natural moisturizing factors, an increase in one or more lipids, and a decrease in total protein.