Effects of an Oral Multi-Ingredient Supplement on Crow’s-Feet Wrinkles and Skin Hydration: A 56-Day Open-Label Exploratory Study

Oral nutricosmetic supplements are widely used to support skin appearance, but finished multi-ingredient products require dedicated clinical evaluation because their performance cannot be inferred from ingredient-level data alone. This prospective, single-centre, open-label, single-arm exploratory study evaluated NatureU® Mind Care BeautyU Caps, a capsule containing quercetin, cranberry-derived proanthocyanidins, pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ), and ergothioneine. A total of 33 healthy women aged 36–56 years, eligible only if baseline cheek hydration was below 60 corneometer units, took one capsule daily for 56 days, with 31 women completing the full protocol. Instrumental assessments at days 0, 28, and 56 covered crow’s-feet wrinkle parameters (PRIMOS CR); stratum corneum hydration (Corneometer CM 825); and biomechanical, radiance, pigmentation, and dermal-structure measures. The prespecified primary endpoint, wrinkle count, fell from 965 ± 334 to 514 ± 171 (−46.73%) and hydration rose from 44.3 ± 7.8 to 70.3 ± 9.9 (+58.57%); both changes occurred in all 31 completers. Wrinkle depth changed only non-significantly. Individual-participant data show that the reduction in wrinkle count was almost exactly proportional across a 5.9-fold range of baseline values (D56/D0 ratio 0.535 ± 0.041) and was complete by day 28, a pattern more consistent with a systematic difference between imaging sessions than with a biological effect; the analysis parameters needed to exclude this were not available. No adverse reactions occurred. Because there was no control arm, because enrolment selected the low end of the hydration distribution, and because count-based profilometry is threshold-dependent, these magnitudes are upper-bound within-participant observations subject to regression to the mean and to expectancy effects; the hydration finding is hypothesis-generating, and the wrinkle-count finding should not be treated as evidence of efficacy. Confirmation in randomized, placebo-controlled trials is required.