Evaluation of the safety and usefulness of citrus jabara fruit peel powder cream for patients with atopic dermatitis

Abstract

Citrus jabara (CJ) is a rare citrus that originally grew wild only in the southern area of the Kii peninsula in Japan. In the relationship between CJ and atopic dermatitis (AD), improvement of AD by oral intake of CJ fruit juice was reported in AD model mice. Our previous study also showed anti-inflammatory potentials of CJ fruit peels in vitro. In this study, the applicability of CJ fruit peel powder (CJ powder) for topical application in patients with AD was investigated. After confirming both the safety of CJ powder in preclinical studies and the safety of 5% CJ powder cream in healthy volunteers, the safety and usefulness of 5% CJ powder cream were evaluated in 20 patients with AD. Evaluation of 5% CJ powder cream in patients with AD for 4 weeks showed improvement in the mean severity score of the affected area (from 3.0 to 2.0, p=0.001 by Student’s t test), improvement in skin lesions (11 of 20 participants), usefulness (16 of 20 participants), and safety (16 of 20 participants). Although aggravation of symptoms on application areas were observed on 4 participants, their aggravation were systemic, resulting from causes other than tested cream. These results suggested that 5% CJ powder cream is useful and safe for patients with AD.