Eye irritation of low-irritant cosmetic formulations: correlation of in vitro results with clinical data and product composition.

Alternative methods to the Draize eye irritation test, such as the hen's egg test-chorioallantoic membrane (HET-CAM) or the bovine corneal opacity and permeability (BCOP) tests, are currently used to evaluate the irritant potential of cosmetic or consumer products. Although, for strong irritants, the results of these tests correlate well with those of the Draize test, they appear to be less suited to identify mild irritants. In order to improve the sensitivity of alternative eye irritation tests, we developed a novel method that uses a human corneal epithelial cell line (CEPI), and the endpoints of cytotoxicity and IL-8 release.