Skin permeability of porcine placenta extracts and its physiological activities

We investigated the skin permeability and various biological activities of porcine homogenate of placenta (HP) with the highest protein contents (452.89 μg/mg). The content of protein in subcritical extract of HP (SPE) was decreased from the initial content of 452.9 μg/mg to 262.7 μg/mg at 3 h subcritical extract. The contents of amino type nitrogen (A-N) were sharply increased from 35.1 μg/mg of initial content to 305.9 μg/mg at 3 h subcritical extract. The HP showed a noticeable activity in terms of antioxidant capacity for ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) assay and especially for 2,2'-Azinobis-(3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulfonic acid) (ABTS) method. HP, SPE-0.5, SPE-2 and SPE-3 showed inhibitory effect on elastase activities with an IC₅₀ of 46.1, 42.9, 31.6 and 34.7 μg/mL, respectively. SPEs showed more significantly inhibitory effect than HP (p<0.05). The skin permeability of the SPEs was higher than that of the HP. SPE-3 showed highest skin permeation and the permeability was significantly higher than that of HP. SPE-2 also showed significantly higher permeation than HP after 4 h. As expected, increase of extraction time significantly increased skin permeability in the subcritical extract of HP (SPE). From these results, in terms of cost and source availability, porcine placenta extracted with subcritical extraction has advantages over untreated PE and have potential as a cosmetic ingredient.