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Lauric acid in a topical? Good or bad idea for acneic skin
It’s been looked at in a couple of studies, in one they injected rat ears with p.acnes and used a 1% lauric acid in petrolatum topical that showed superior effect to the petrolatum control. It’s also ‘highly comedogenic’ with a rating of 4/4, but at such a low concentration it probably doesn’t have any negative effect in terms of comedogenicity. So, any thoughts about using lauric acid in a topical at say 2% concentration (human skin is thicker than rat skin).Ref: 2009 Antimicrobial Property of Lauric Acid Against Propionibacterium Acnes: Its Therapeutic Potential for Inflammatory Acne Vulgaris
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30 Replies
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My own decision was to use zero lipids. If I were to be interested in what you described, I would try lauricidin, (Monolaurin) which I stock.
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Why lauricidin over regular lauric acid?
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Antibacterial activity.
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Very interesting @Belassi … have you tried Lauricidin in topicals?
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Yes. I use it in a burn treatment cream based on 100% aloe vera plus antibacterial activity from monolaurin. Good results. Mind you, the FDA doesn’t approve! However studies have been done. GML is ≥ 200 times more effective than lauric acid in bactericidal activity, defined as a ≥ 3 log reduction in colony-forming units (CFU)/ml, against Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pyogenes in broth cultures.
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What do you mean, FDA doesn’t approve? Sorry, I don’t have time yet to do the research on my own. Is there a problem with using it as an ingredients in a cream in the US?
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The FDA have issued a warning letter against the supplier for making false claims. My link above goes to it.
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Thanks @Belassi. That does not mean that there is a problem with the ingredient, the letter was issued regarding statements and claims the company was making on its website.
This is very cool … a surfactant/emulsifier/preservative booster multifunctional. I’ll work it into some of my products. -
Antibacterial products are an OTC in the US and you are restricted to only use approved ingredients. There is a process by which the supplier can get it approved as a new antibacterial agent. Why haven’t they done that?
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This particular company is not a supplier of monolaurin as an ingredient for cosmetics use. They were promoting it as an oral antibacterial supplement of sorts and making claims that it had an antibacterial effect in the gut.
Lonza sells it as a cosmetic emulsifier. -
Very interesting. I love when you can get multiple uses out of a single ingredient.
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Yes, it’s quite a fascinating multifunctional ingredient. I’m going to make some formulations using it and will post results.
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sometimes really I dont understand the meaning of sentences and I miss them
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@ nasrins, just ask then
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@ Belassi No wonder FDA didn’t approve, if I understand it correctly the company even claimed that lauricidin could inactivate HIV!
However their homepage has changed substantially since the warning letter..Interesting ingredient but still a long way to go before the efficacy can be proved?… -
I use monolaurin solely in our burn cream, called “Rescue Cream”. The development came about after I read some published papers about the efficacy of aloe vera as a burn treatment. It appears that aloe vera gel is at least as, and possibly more, effective than the still-used silver metal dressing.
Reasoning that the silver is used because of its antibacterial properties, I included monolaurin as the antibacterial agent and emulsifier.Although the product was originally designed to treat first and second degree sunburn, we’ve had reports (and have photos) of arc welding burns etc. that responded very well to it.I approached one of the two local dermatological societies with the idea of a double blind test against whatever they wanted to put up, but that’s another story. -
Still, lauric acid has in vivo mouse model results used as a anti p.acnes topical, whereas no such data for monolaurin exits to my knowledge. So why not just use lauric acid?
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Or, just do a micro plate test on P. Acnes with Monolaurin versus Lauric Acid to see how they perform relative to one another. You would know the results within a week. Structurally, Glyceryl Laurate and Lauric Acid are very similar and I would suspect have similar antibacterial properties.
The question would then be if Glyceryl Laurate is as comedogenic as Lauric Acid? -
Well it is A question, but not sure if it has much relevance if using it at 2% as proposed, as the comedogenicity study usually referred to tests each ingredient at 10% concentration in propylene glycol on rabbit ears: http://journal.scconline.org/pdf/cc1989/cc040n06/p00321-p00333.pdf
And does a plate teste mimic in vivo topical application?
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Since P. Acnes resides on the surface of the skin, yes, a plate test would be indicative of or mimic a topical application. It would also be very easy to do a topical comparison of the two regarding reduction of P. Acnes. The advantage of the plate test is you don’t need human volunteers … it’s simple.
On the comedogenicity issue, you’re making the assumption that a 2% percent concentration will yield different results from a 10% concentration regarding acne breakouts. Granted, it stands to reason that 10% will result in more pimples than 2%, but you cannot conclude from that that 2% will not be problematic.The great majority of consumers have no clue as to how the test to determine the comedogenicity index was conducted … what they do know is that if they have acne, an ingredient with a comedogenicity index of 4 is not good. -
Avene is using Glyceryl Laurate in acne topicals in Europe.Here’s an interesting point regarding Lauric Acid or Glyceryl Laurate:Since these ingredients have effective antibacterial properties against P. Acnes, is comedogenicity even an issue?What I mean by that is if these ingredients plug hair follicles, do their antibacterial properties prevent P. Acnes bacteria from growing beneath the plug, in which case, yes, they may plug hair follicle, but you do not have acne outbreaks as a result due to the antibacterial properties.
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Mark, P.Acnes is anaerobic, it lives in the skin, rather than on it, yes?
My question is, does everyone have this in their skin or only acne sufferers? I saw a case the other day and even her arms and hands were breaking out.I’m continuing development on our own product and frankly, I don’t use any lipids at all. Most especially not anything to do with coconut. My testers seem to be showing that the concentration of thyme we’re currently using is not enough, lesions were reduced about 50%, so I will double the concentration. (It is the aqueous extract). -
P Acnes is an oxygen-tolerant anaerobic, gram+, rod that is a natural flora organism on human skin. All human beings have P. Acnes resident on their skin. It lives in the hair follicles and on the surface of the skin and feeds on sebum. So, yes, every human has P. Acnes on their skin.Coconut-derivatives are generally not good for people with acne to put on their face due to comdogenicity, which traps the bacteria in the hair follicle where the population explodes creating a pimple.The interesting thing about Lauric Acid / Glyceryl Laurate (Monolaurin) is the strong antibacterial properties against P. Acnes.
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We don’t know if rabbit ear comedogenicity matters at all for human acne progression. We don’t even know if its comedogenic on human skin. And If you look at the reviews of coconut oil on acne.org, it gets 4.1/5 whereas Jojoba oil gets 4.2/5, not much of a difference.
From the wiki on p.acnes it seems quite clear that there’s not much of it on the skin:
“It is usually just barely detectable on the skin of healthy preadolescents. “
“P. acnes bacteria live deep within follicles and pores, away from the surface of the skin. In these follicles, P. acnes bacteria use sebum, cellular debris and metabolic byproducts from the surrounding skin tissue as their primary sources of energy and nutrients. Elevated production of sebum by hyperactive sebaceous glands (sebaceous hyperplasia) or blockage of the follicle can cause P. acnes bacteria to grow and multiply.[5]” -
No offense, but Acne.org and Wiki are not exactly what I would call reliable reference sources.
So, what is the point you’re trying to make … that the commonly used comedogenicity index is useless? Or that comedogenicity does not matter?
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