Gepan

Gepan is a German bladder- and intimate-health brand owned by the family pharmaceutical company G. Pohl-Boskamp GmbH & Co. KG, which is based in Hohenlockstedt in Schleswig-Holstein [6]. The brand sits at the border between personal care and medicine. Its range spans a pharmacy intimate-care gel, a prescription bladder treatment for chronic cystitis, and a pelvic-floor training app.

Only one of these, the Gepan Mannose-Gel, belongs to cosmetics in the everyday sense. The rest of the line is aimed at doctors, pharmacists and patients living with long-term bladder conditions. The brand is active, and its products are sold mainly through pharmacies.

When the Gepan name was first used is not publicly documented. No founding year, founder or launch story is given for the brand itself, and its parent company's own history page does not mention it. What is clear is who stands behind it: the brand's legal notice names G. Pohl-Boskamp as the company behind the registered Gepan trademark, and the owner lists Gepan products in its "urinary tract and bladder" medicines category [7].

Pohl-Boskamp's age depends on which event is counted as its start. The company dates itself to 1835, when the apothecary Wilhelm Rose began making gelatin capsules at the "Zum weißen Schwan" pharmacy in Berlin [9]. The Gepan website repeats that date in its footer line "Seit 1835". A 2013 company portrait in the German pharmacy trade publication APOTHEKE ADHOC instead gives 1890, the year Otto Eisengarten bought the Pohl business from the pharmacist Georg Gustav Pohl [11]. Neither year refers to Gepan as a brand.

The company's later history runs through several generations of one family. Kurt Boskamp, Eisengarten's son-in-law, took over in 1921 and gave the firm the second half of its name. After the First World War, production was centralised in Danzig. In 1945 his son Arthur Boskamp moved the operation, with its equipment, to Schleswig-Holstein ahead of the Soviet advance. He re-established it in the former Lockstedter Lager military barracks at Hohenlockstedt, where capsule and pill production resumed under British occupation.

Since 1991 the company has been led by Marianne Boskamp and Dr. Henning Ueck, the fourth generation of family management. Pohl-Boskamp reports around 600 employees across its Hohenlockstedt and Dägeling sites and a presence in more than 50 countries. Its better-known medicines include Gelomyrtol, first introduced in 1935, Nitrolingual spray, and the head-lice treatment Nyda, launched in 2006. Gepan is the company's bladder-health line within that wider portfolio.

The brand presents itself around one idea: "understanding, preventing and caring for" bladder health. For the consumer side of the range, Gepan uses the tagline "Für mehr Leichtigkeit im Intimbereich" (roughly, "for more ease in the intimate area"). It sums up its approach in three words: care, protect and feel well.

That framing shapes the website as much as the products. Alongside product pages, gepan.de runs an advice section covering intimate care during periods, pregnancy, sexuality, pelvic-floor exercises, nutrition, stress and bladder health, travel planning and self-help groups. It also includes a voiding diary, a simple log patients keep of when and how much they urinate. A separate section for doctors and pharmacists gathers the clinical literature behind the bladder treatment.

The tone differs between the two audiences. Consumer pages speak directly to the reader. The professional section reads like a product monograph, with indications, dosage and a table of studies.

### Gepan Mannose-Gel

The Mannose-Gel is the brand's intimate-care product, meant for the external intimate area only. Pohl-Boskamp brought it to market in 2020, as reported by APOTHEKE ADHOC in October of that year [10]. According to that report, the gel is intended to support the skin barrier of the external intimate area and offer protection against recurring infections such as cystitis.

The gel is built on what the brand calls its Mannose-Hydro-Komplex, a combination of three ingredients:

- D-mannose, which, the company says, stops harmful gut bacteria such as E. coli from attaching to the skin; - Hyaluronic acid, described as adding moisture and forming a gel-like protective film; - Lactic acid, which Gepan says keeps the area's pH within its natural range.

The product is labelled vegan and, according to the brand, contains no additives such as parabens or other stabilisers [3]. Gepan describes it as "clinically, dermatologically tested" and suitable for sensitive skin. The trade report notes that the paraben-free formula allows use during pregnancy and breastfeeding. It is applied several times a day after thorough hand-washing, for example after using the toilet or after sport, with one pump per application.

### Gepan instill

Gepan instill is the medical core of the brand and its most documented product. It is a 0.2 percent solution of highly purified chondroitin sulfate, a natural building block of the bladder's inner protective coating. The solution is delivered directly into the bladder through a catheter. It comes as a 40 ml pre-filled syringe that attaches to the catheter, and the low volume is meant for patients whose bladder capacity is reduced.

The product rests on what doctors call GAG replacement therapy. The bladder wall is lined with a layer of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) that shields it from irritating substances in urine. In several chronic bladder diseases this layer is damaged. Gepan instill is intended to rebuild it temporarily and so restore the barrier. It is indicated for interstitial cystitis (a chronic inflammatory bladder condition), overactive bladder, cystitis caused by radiation or chemotherapy, and chronic recurring urinary tract infections.

Its regulatory description varies between the brand's own pages. The consumer page calls Gepan instill a prescription medical device [4]. The professional section says it is distributed in Germany as a medicine and is manufactured and sold there by Pohl-Boskamp. A typical course, according to the owner, starts with four to six weekly instillations, after which a doctor may move the patient to a monthly maintenance dose depending on symptoms [8]. The solution stays in the bladder for at least 30 minutes each time.

Outside Germany, Gepan instill appears in a UK National Health Service pharmacy database. It is listed there as a 0.2 percent bladder instillation in a pre-filled syringe, supplied by Purple Orchid Health Ltd [12].

### Gepan Inkontinenz-Therapie App

The third part of the range is a digital one. The Gepan incontinence therapy app offers pelvic-floor training, which the brand presents as "pelvic-floor training for your everyday life". On the website the app is grouped under an incontinence study, with its own instructions for use. It fits a broader direction at the parent company, which describes itself as developing both medicines and digital health applications.

### Discontinued: Gepan Mannose to go

Gepan Mannose to go was a food supplement combining D-mannose, cranberry extract and zinc. It has been discontinued; the brand states that it is no longer being produced and remains available only while stocks last [2]. No date for the decision is given.

The professional section of the website lists a selection of studies on chondroitin sulfate instillation, and the brand leans on them heavily. Most of them concern the active substance and the treatment approach rather than the Gepan product name.

The most frequently cited is an observational study by Nordling and van Ophoven from 2008. It followed patients from Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark and Sweden over three months. The brand reports its results in two different ways. The consumer page says that more than 77 percent of patients and doctors rated the treatment positively, and that the urge to urinate fell by 50 percent [4]. The professional page describes the same study as a multicentre trial of 286 patients in which 84 percent of doctors and 82 percent of patients rated the therapy positively [5]. The two pages do not explain the difference, which may reflect different measures or rounding.

The professional section also cites a 2006 randomised trial by Gauruder-Burmester in overactive bladder. According to the brand's summary, 72 percent of patients improved with chondroitin sulfate compared with 43 percent on the drug tolterodine, and the effect held over 24 months [5]. Other entries include a 2012 literature review of 27 studies by Madersbacher and colleagues that found the 0.2 percent concentration optimal, and a 2015 study by Schwalenberg and colleagues reporting that 80 percent of patients with cystitis linked to radiotherapy or chemotherapy were symptom-free or improved after six weeks.

The brand further states that Gepan instill is named as a recommended treatment option in the German Society of Urology's guideline on interstitial cystitis, published in September 2018 [5].

Gepan is an active brand. Its website carries the current range of the Mannose-Gel, Gepan instill and the incontinence therapy app, and the products remain listed with pharmacy retailers. The most recent dated product event in public reporting is the 2020 launch of the Mannose-Gel. One product, Mannose to go, has been withdrawn from production. The brand also maintains social media accounts on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.