Application of bovine corneal opacity and permeability test in the eye irritation evaluation of cosmetics

Objective To establish bovine corneal opacity and permeability （BCOP） test， and determine its predictive ability for the eye irritation evaluation of cosmetics.

Methods A total of ten reference chemicals were selected to establish the BCOP test. Then eye irritation of 16 routinely collected cosmetics in our laboratory was predicted. In vitro scores were calculated by the change in the opacity and sodium fluorescein permeability after exposure to the testing cosmetics， and subsequently compared with the historical data by Draize test.

Results Reference chemicals with known irritation classification were correctly classified by the BCOP test， which was consistent with the classification of UN globally harmonized system of classification and labeling of chemicals. Moreover， the specificity of the BCOP test for the classification of non-irritating cosmetics samples was 80.0% （8/10）， and the sensitivity for weak to mild irritating cosmetics samples was 83.3% （5/6）. The BCOP test demonstrated an overall classification consistency of 81.3% （13/16） with in vivo test.

Conclusion BCOP test may be independently used to identify chemicals with potential eye irritation and serious eye damage， suggesting it is significant for in vitro integrated test strategy for predicting eye irritation due to cosmetics.