Dietary Supplementation with Specific Collagen Peptides Has a Body Mass Index-Dependent Beneficial Effect on Cellulite Morphology

Schunck M, Zague V, Oesser S, Proksch E · Journal of Medicinal Food

Six months is the longest placebo-controlled VERISOL exposure on record. Cellulite score fell further than placebo across the whole study population at both 3 and 6 months, and in normal-weight and overweight women separately at 6 months, reaching a 9% difference against placebo in normal-weight women. Thigh skin waviness separated at 6 months overall and by 11.1% in normal-weight women, while the 3.6% difference in overweight women did not reach significance. Dermal density separated because placebo lost 3.1% over the six months (p<0.01) and the collagen group did not. The subcutaneous borderline shortened from baseline but did not separate from placebo.

Population

Women aged 24.8-53.5 (mean 40.6) with moderate cellulite on the thighs

Intervention

2.5 g specific bioactive collagen peptides (VERISOL) daily for 6 months

Comparator

Maltodextrin

Limitations

Cellulite morphology is a cosmetic endpoint with no bearing on articular cartilage. The paper names no primary endpoint, reports no trial registration, and tests four measures at two timepoints across three populations without correcting for multiplicity; the cellulite score is an ordinal pinch-test grade compared between groups with a t-test. 105 were randomised and 97 finished, and the cellulite tables analyse 49 and 48. One author is an employee of GELITA Brazil and two are at the Collagen Research Institute; the product is GELITA's. The paper's own results give the age range as 24.8-53.5 years where its abstract says 24-50.