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How is this azelaic acid formula possible?
I purchased a 20% azelaic acid gel for personal use due to good reviews. It’s a clear, water-based gel that goes on skin and absorbs like a typical carbomer-type product. In short, nothing like the powdery/gritty/drying azelaic acid gels/emulsions that I’m used to. It doesn’t even make my skin tingle!
After checking out the official ingredients, I’ve decided there’s either sorcery involved or the list isn’t accurate as I’m suspecting what’s being used here is potassium azeloyl diglycinate instead. Thoughts?
Water, azelaic acid, ascorbic acid, tocopherol, collagen, ubiquinone, carbomer, squalane, Centella asiatica extract, Curcuma longan extract, glycolic acid, sodium hydroxide, EDTA, potassium sorbate.
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13 Replies
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Well it is obviously fake. Azelaic Acid is poorly soluble in water so you need a solvent. Solvent would be preceding Azelaic Acid. Also Ascorbic Acid is not stabilized and would oxidize in days giving color. Plus Carbomer should be neutralized to gel, but the product has a lot of acids and probably is meant to have low pH. So I don’t think this product is legit
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It contains sodium hydroxide as a base. Add enough and it turns azelaic acid into a water soluble salt. You can check pH 😉 .
BTW all the acids in there would precipitate carbomer, unless they’re all neutralised…
My opinion: Probably not fake but utterly useless because azelates (azelaic acid in salt form) aren’t active.-
if it contained that much azelate or other salts, the carbomer gel wouldn’t retain its structure
also, as it’s diprotic, azelaic acid would need a staggering amount of caustic soda to neutralise
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True that, you’re right 🙂 .
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Sodium Hydroxide is close to EDTA, so it should be in small amount. But this INCI list is all questionable and we can’t make assumptions on ingredients position I guess
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Right, I’ve overlooked the 1% line. Full neutralisation of 20% azelaic acid would require over 4% NaOH. That’s really very weird.
Maybe the azelaic acid is micronised? It wouldn’t feel gritty then. Although, the product would also look very wight and probably require a dispersant too.
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yeah, this is definitely fake
solubilised azelaic acid products that strength are all emulsions; being both highly polar and hydrophobic, it’s a notoriously difficult ingredient to solubilise, unless you use something like N,N-dimethyl formamide as a co-solvent (which is not in the slightest bit suitable for topical use, being highly toxic)
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Is this ingredient list authentic? It eems that simple PG can work well too.
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Of course it can. The problem comes when you add water. If your formula is pure PG - then many substances (like Salicylic Acid, Azelaic Acid) have no issues with solubility.
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I’m not convinced - having spent many hours working with it on the bench, I know that azelaic acid is poorly soluble in damn near everything, including propylene glycol
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https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0831768A1/en
In this patent then say you can dissolve up to 10% of Azelaic Acid in pure PG.
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I’ve tried it (and many other solvents) - it doesn’t work
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Not sure what’s wrong with your ingredients, but Azelaic acid is soluble in pure PG. Here you can see it: https://youtu.be/VssxLD7skQA
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