Alpha-Lipoic Acid: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Alpha-Lipoic Acid is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Sold as
- Alpha Lipoic Acid
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Every alpha-lipoic acid product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Alpha Lipoic Acid.
Alpha-Lipoic Acid recalls
From the FDA Enforcement database. A recall covers specific lots — not the drug as a whole.
What people report to the FDA about alpha-lipoic acid
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 5,204 reports naming alpha-lipoic acid, and the FDA flagged 60% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- fatigue618 reports
- nausea425 reports
- diarrhoea381 reports
- headache350 reports
- dizziness323 reports
- neuropathy peripheral265 reports
- dyspnoea251 reports
- arthralgia241 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean alpha-lipoic acid caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 25, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
What is Alpha Lipoic Acid?
Alpha Lipoic Acid (Alpha-Lipoic Acid) is a dietary supplement.
Can you take alpha-lipoic acid with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run alpha-lipoic acid against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
Is there a generic alpha-lipoic acid?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled alpha-lipoic acid product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Has alpha-lipoic acid been recalled?
The FDA's Enforcement database lists 1 recall record whose product description mentions alpha-lipoic acid. The most recent: Alpha Lipoic Acid for Injection (Jul 30, 2025). A recall applies to specific lots, not to the drug as a whole — check the record for the affected lot numbers.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Alpha-Lipoic Acid: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/alpha-lipoic-acid
- MLA
- “Alpha-Lipoic Acid: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/alpha-lipoic-acid.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for alpha-lipoic acid on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.