Functional Category
Cosmetic
Last updated
Compounds used for the appearance of skin and hair, covering texture, firmness, fine lines and pigmentation, usually applied to the surface rather than injected. The category is defined by intended use rather than by chemistry, so the same molecule can appear in a cosmetic formulation and in a repair context, and it is filed by the use the record describes. In most jurisdictions a cosmetic claim is regulated as an appearance claim, which is a lower bar than a medical one.
Why it matters here
For a topical, the vehicle decides almost everything, so a cosmetic record depends on the formulation base at least as much as on the ingredient, and a percentage on a label tells you less than the base it is dissolved in.
What it is not
A peptide in a face cream is not necessarily reaching the layer it is claimed to act on: most peptides are too large to cross intact skin in useful amounts, so a result from a fibroblast culture does not carry over to the same molecule in a serum. Cosmetic also describes a use, while Cosmetic Peptide describes a molecule type, and a cosmetic product may contain none.
Also called
- skin
- dermal
- aesthetic
- topical cosmetic
- skincare
Dermal and topical cosmetic are used interchangeably in product listings. Dermal properly means the layer beneath the surface, which is precisely the layer a topical has to reach and often does not.
Compounds carrying this term
None on file yet. This term is in the controlled vocabulary but no compound record currently uses it — which is a statement about our coverage, not about the term.