Editorial standards

The core monograph, evidence table, tools and claim manifest are produced in two passes: a research pass that drafts claims from primary sources, and a verification pass in which citations are checked against PubMed or Europe PMC, FDA sources, DailyMed, the eCFR or PubChem. Trial results are reported with design, size, duration, comparator and strength. This site is produced by a research and editorial team using automated retrieval tools under human direction. No physician or clinician has reviewed this content, and we do not claim medical review: content that names no reviewer has had none. The generated guide archive has not completed this review standard; those pages are visibly labeled, set noindex, and excluded from sitemaps and AI citation files until individually approved.

Approved core claims about azelaic acid may cite only peer-reviewed literature, FDA and DailyMed records, the Code of Federal Regulations, or PubChem. Retailers, influencer content and press releases are not accepted as evidence for health claims. Where evidence does not exist at a given strength or for a given claim, we say so instead of borrowing evidence from a different concentration. Arithmetic derived from cited facts shows its derivation. Commercial care content is kept separate from the editorial evidence standard and is disclosed as commercial.

Every page displays its published and last-updated dates. This reference is re-reviewed when any of the following happens: a new randomized trial of azelaic acid at any strength is published; a systematic review or meta-analysis in rosacea, acne, melasma or hyperpigmentation is published or updated; FDA approves, withdraws or relabels any azelaic acid product; the OTC acne monograph changes; or a label revision lands in DailyMed. Independent of triggers, the entire citation set is re-verified on a quarterly cycle and dead links are repaired or replaced.

If you find an error, use the contact link in the site footer. Corrections are assessed against primary sources, and substantive fixes are noted on the affected page with the date of the change. Where sources disagree we surface the disagreement in the text: this site presents both the equal-to-hydroquinone trial result and the modern meta-analyses that rank azelaic acid mid-field, because both are real.

Site statistics are counts of this site's own content, computed at build time from the evidence pack and recomputable from the rendered pages. The study total is the number of rows in the study-results table. Species and concentration counts are censuses of those columns. The interventional subset counts rows graded human RCT, human trial or human pharmacokinetics, excluding reviews and meta-analyses, and each excluded row shows why in its own grade chip. The citation total is the length of the numbered reference list, and the source-mix percentage is its type census. External trial figures quoted in copy (664, 1362, 329, 23) are anchored claims resolving to fetched sources via the claims ledger, not site counts.