We've dieted, brushed, massaged with oils and pummelled with creams and still those thigh tops, buttocks and love handles dimple with the dreaded cellulite. Now an Italian cosmetic company claims to have the path to smooth curves sewn up in a twice-a-day pill.

Too good to be true? Well... Launched last week, Cellasene has, if reports are to be believed, caused near riots in Australia as women battled for scarce supplies in chemists and health food shops. In Britain, courtesy appears to have prevailed so far, though whether that's due to the innate queuing instinct or a healthy scepticism remains to be seen.

Claiming to be the first product to attack cellulite 'from the inside out', Cellasene is a combination of herbs such as ginko biloba, sweet clover, evening primrose oil and seaweed. The recommended regimen - twice a day for eight weeks - will cost you just under £75, and can, say manufacturers Medestea Interna, be repeated when necessary.

According to its creator, Dr Gianfranco Merizzi, unpublished results from the first placebo-controlled trial of Cellasene done by the University of Pavia in Italy on 85 women show that taking the combination for eight weeks increases blood circulation to the cellulite-stuck areas by an average of 35 per cent and reduces the subcutaneous fat layer there by 10 per cent. The study also showed a reduction in hip and thigh size of 1.5 and 3 per cent respectively.

The pill works, says Merizzi, by repairing the circulation of blood and lymph fluids. Blockage of these systems allows waste products to build up, stops fat from being accessed for energy use, and traps it in fibrous pockets which produce the familiar pucker of cellulite. By restoring the circulation, Cellasene remobilises the trapped fat. It also increases the body's metabolic rate, so that fat is burned up faster.

Nice theory. The problem, say obesity experts, is that it's based on rather faulty biology. The ingredients of Cellasene may well improve circulation and even impact on metabolic rates. Professor Peter Houghton, head of the King's College London Centre for Bioactivity Screening of Natural Products, says there is plenty of evidence that ginko biloba acts as an anticoagulant, reducing blood stickiness and enhancing circulation, and seaweed contains iodine which could stimulate the thyroid gland and affect the speed at which the body functions. But the premise that increasing blood circulation can shift fat and/or cellulite is where the theory may part company from the facts.

Indeed, says Dr Nicholas Finer, a leading researcher into obesity, and a consultant physican at the Luton and Dunstable Hospital in Bedfordshire, even the term 'cellulite' is an 'invention of the cosmetic industry'.

'The idea that "cellulite" is something different to subcutaneous fat has no medical basis. It is true that fats may behave differently in different parts of the body, but "cellulite" is the perfectly normal storage of fat. There's no evidence that it's due to any disease process or abnormality of any kind. Some people have too much of it and some people think they have too much of it and some people don't like the look of it, but it doesn't mean you have an illness.' More importantly, says Finer, it's not the blood supply that mobilises fat stores, but a hormone called lippoprotein lipase. Blood flow, he adds, is entirely dependent on temperature: when we are cold, our blood vessels constrict, when we are warm they dilate.

'So if it were to do with blood circulation, all your cellulite would disappear in the summer as you warmed up and your circulation improved.' Temperature change would also confound the researchers' measurement of increased circulation, adds Finer, and the measurement of subcutaneous fat is notoriously difficult to capture accurately. As for Cellasene's ability to increase metabolism through the iodine in its seaweed component, nowhere in Britain is deficient in iodine, so taking a bit extra is unlikely to have any effect at all.

Dr Merizzi counters that Cellasene has passed the rigorous toxicological tests required for sales permission by the US Food and Drug Administration. But these tests are rigorous for safety, not efficacy.

As for all the glowing testimonies, Finer suggests it's simply a matter of beauty is in the eye of the beholder.