Background: Determining sunscreen sun protection factors (SPFs) in a cohort of volunteers, particularly on products designed to provide high levels of protection, can be time-consuming. The conventional approach is to administer to each subject a series of exposures (normally between five and seven) on their sunscreen-protected skin.
Method: A method, based on Gaussian statistics, is proposed that requires just a single exposure on the sunscreen-protected skin in volunteers to arrive at a reliable estimate of the mean SPF of a test product.
Results/Conclusion: The method is shown to yield an estimate of a product's mean SPF that is comparable, or better, in accuracy to estimates obtained by conventional multi-exposure testing.
Diffey BL. Sun protection factor determination in vivo using a single exposure on sunscreen-protected skin. Photodermatol Photoimmunol Photomed 2003; 19: 309-312.
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