Studying babies’ skin, from birth on
For 75 years, our research teams have developed a unique and globally recognised expertise in the physiology of babies' skin from birth.
Isn't baby skin wonderfully soft? Yes, but also very fragile and still developing... Our EV.E.I.L.S. (EValuation of Early Infant Life / focus on Skin), an unprecedented global study, has made three important discoveries about babies' skin:
Babies have immature skin
The barrier function of babies' skin is immature, more porous than that of adults, and requires greater protection from external influences in order to preserve its cellular capital. This unique lifetime supply of cells, which babies are born with and which allows the skin to regenerate throughout their lives, is particularly vulnerable in the first two years of life.
Baby skin dehydrates more quickly
At birth, baby skin is less able to absorb and retain water, so it dehydrates more easily and quickly than adult skin.
4 baby skin types
There are four skin types with different characteristics: normal, dry, very sensitive and eczema-prone. This discovery has enabled us to design our Mustela products with specific active ingredients that are perfectly suited to each type of skin.
The different skin types
Normal skin
There's nothing quite like the soft, delicate skin of a baby. "Normal" refers to this idea of "baby skin": it is supple, soft and comfortable. Yet... it is more porous to external influences (pollution, bacteria, pollen) and is constantly dehydrated.
During its first two years, baby skin needs to be moisturised and protected on a daily basis.
Dry skin
Eczema-prone skin
Very sensitive skin
Mustela has published 84 international scientific publications on skin and filed 14 patents.
Our teams have developed patented models of reconstructed baby skin at different ages - Stelaskin® - that mimic different skin types.
This innovation allows us to study different skin types in more detail, better understand the impact of specific skin exposures and evaluate and test all our products on these reconstituted skin models.
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