Acetylated Hyaluronic Acid

Measured on: visible surface smoothing and wrinkle filling from the applied film — crow's-feet wrinkle count and nasolabial wrinkle area, imaged 6 hours after a single application against a placebo-treated half-face.

This ingredient does have vehicle-controlled human data, and not one study but three, run by the supplier and published together, all double-blind, placebo-controlled and half-face. Twenty-one women aged 42-70 applied 0.2% and were read once at 6 hours: 6% fewer total crow's-feet wrinkles than the placebo side, and a shrinking coarse nasogenian area where the placebo side grew (p<0.05 for both). Twenty women applied 0.1% twice daily and were read at day 28: 9% fewer nasogenian wrinkles, 12% smaller total wrinkle area and 13% fewer medium lines than placebo. Thirty women applied 0.1% twice daily and were read at day 56: 9% less surface roughness than placebo. The bucket sits at the 6-hour read because that is the earliest point at which the ingredient separated from its placebo and it is a film effect a user can see the same day; the 28-day and 56-day arms each have a single endpoint read, so neither of them dates an onset either. What to hold against all of it: every effect size is single-digit percent, the 6-hour arm ran at double the concentration of the multi-week arms, all authors are employed by the ingredient's supplier, and nobody independent has repeated any of it. The hydration axis the base scores highest still has no published time course, and the claim that it out-hydrates ordinary sodium hyaluronate at matched dose remains unshown in any head-to-head; the ex vivo work on acetyl groups resisting hyaluronidase is mechanism, not a timeline.

Meunier M, Scandolera A, Chapuis E, Lapierre L, Sandré J, Brunner G, Lovchik M, Reynaud R. 'The anti-wrinkles properties of sodium acetylated hyaluronate.' J Cosmet Dermatol. 2022;21(7):2749-2762. PMID:34708918 (DOI:10.1111/jocd.14539) — three double-blind placebo-controlled half-face studies (6 h at 0.2%, n=21; day 28 at 0.1%, n=20; day 56 at 0.1%, n=30). All authors affiliated with Givaudan Active Beauty, the ingredient's supplier; no independent replication located.