SCIENCE / MEDICINE : Retin-A May Anchor Skin Layers

The much-touted skin cream Retin-A may fight wrinkles by helping to anchor the body’s outer layer of skin to the inner layer, researchers said last week. The prescription cream, known generically as retinoic acid, attracted wide attention in January, 1988, when a study in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. said it had diminished wrinkles and other aging signs in 14 of 15 middle-aged subjects tested at the University of Michigan.

A follow-up study, appearing Tuesday in the same journal and involving six of the Michigan subjects, now suggests that Retin-A works in part by increasing the number of tissue fibers in the skin, called “anchoring fibrils,” that help cement the epidermis--the skin’s outer layer--to the inner dermis. The skin samples treated with Retin-A had an average of about twice as many anchoring fibrils as the comparison samples, the researchers found.

Wrinkles happen when the underlying dermis loses elasticity as a result of aging and sun damage. The dermis shrinks, making the upper epidermis too loose, leading to the formation of tiny creases and folds.