Ascorbic Acid: uses, dosing, side effects & brands

Ascorbic 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.

By the pharmaranks editorial teamReviewed against the FDA (openFDA label, NDC Directory & Enforcement) sourcesUpdated Jul 24, 2026How we research

Key facts

Sold as: Vitamin C
Generic available?: Not in our catalog

Every ascorbic 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: Vitamin C.

Combination products containing ascorbic acid

A combination is a different drug — different dosing, different warnings. It is listed here so you can find it, not so you can substitute it.

Ascorbic Acid recalls

From the FDA Enforcement database. A recall covers specific lots — not the drug as a whole.

How long ascorbic acid keeps

The date on a sealed pack is not the only one: some ascorbic acid labels start a second clock once the product is opened or mixed, as short as 4 hours.

Does ascorbic acid expire? The in-use limits and storage rules from its labels

What people report to the FDA about ascorbic acid

The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 37,708 reports naming ascorbic acid, and the FDA flagged 71% 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:

fatigue3,551 reports
nausea3,031 reports
diarrhoea2,821 reports
headache2,727 reports
dyspnoea2,378 reports
vomiting2,260 reports
asthenia2,140 reports
dizziness2,044 reports

Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean ascorbic 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

How long it stays in your system →

Frequently asked questions

Can you take ascorbic 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 ascorbic 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 ascorbic acid?

We do not currently list a generic-labelled ascorbic 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 ascorbic acid been recalled?

The FDA's Enforcement database lists 3 recall records whose product description mentions ascorbic acid. The most recent: Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C) 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). Ascorbic Acid: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/ascorbic-acid
MLA: “Ascorbic Acid: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/ascorbic-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 ascorbic acid on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.