AOD-9604 vs HGH Fragment 176-191
There is no winner on this page. What is set side by side is the published record behind each one, which is the part the two are rarely compared on.
Metabolic and GLP-1Growth hormone
Every human dose in this family belongs to one of the two. AOD-9604 is the modified copy, sixteen daltons and two CAS numbers away, and it is the one that was given to people: 25 to 400 mcg/kg into a vein, or 0.25 mg to 54 mg swallowed. Six searches across four databases found no human study of the unmodified fragment at any dose. The record being borrowed is also a negative one, since the trials that did run did not beat placebo and the sponsor closed the obesity programme in February 2007.
| Field | AOD-9604 | HGH Fragment 176-191 |
|---|---|---|
| What a trial gave | 0.25, 0.5 and 1 mg a day, swallowedMETAOD006, the phase 2b in 502 adults over 24 weeks, which missed | No human dose of the fragment was foundSix searches across four databases on 2026-08-05 found no human study of it |
| What circulates | 300 mcg a day under the skin, inside a 250 to 500 mcg band | 250 to 500 mcg a day under the skin in 8 to 12 week cycles, or 200 to 500 mcg fasted for about four weeks |
| The gap | Lands on a studied dose | No studied dose to compare |
| How long it lasts | I could not find a half life, a clearance time or any figure for how long it lasts in the body, in people or in any animal. What the record does show is how often it was given: the two oral trials gave one capsule a day, and the intravenous work gave either a single dose or one dose a week. | The 15 to 20 minute figure everyone quotes has no published human source. The Food and Drug Administration reported that it did not identify any clinical study of how the modified copy is taken up, spread or cleared by the body, by any route, and six searches across four databases turned up no human study of the unmodified fragment at all. |
| Route studied | Swallowed, as capsules once a day, and into a vein, as single doses and as a weekly dose. In animals, by tube into the stomach of rats, and one study injected 0.25 mg into a rabbit's knee joint. The only administration under the skin anywhere in the published record is in mice, 250 mcg per kilogram a day by an implanted pump. | Rats and a dish. The summary of the 1978 rat paper never states how it was given. Ma and colleagues followed up in rats in 1982, with no summary published and a full text the author did not obtain. Habibullah and colleagues in 2022 ran the peptide against MCF-7 breast cancer cells and through computer docking simulations, no animal and no person. Every human dose on record in this family belongs to the modified copy, AOD-9604, at 25 to 400 micrograms per kilogram into a vein and 0.25 milligrams to 54 milligrams swallowed. |
| Route used | Injected under the skin, into belly fat. It is the only way it is sold, and I could not find one published human study of anybody being given it that way. FDA searched for the same thing in December 2024 and reported the same nothing. | Injected under the skin, and one vendor page specifies fasted. The Food and Drug Administration reported in two separate sections that it did not identify human exposure to the modified copy under the skin or through the skin, and no study giving the unmodified fragment to a person by any route turned up in these searches. |
| Vial sizes | 5, 10 mg | 5 mg |
The distance, stated
Lands on a studied dose
AOD-9604
The circulating band lands on the two smallest arms of the phase 2b, 0.25 and 0.5 mg, and those were swallowed rather than injected. I could not establish a stated derivation for the injectable numbers, only a coincidence of magnitude, since the same 1 mg ceiling appears in the self-affirmed food status. Every human dose in the published record went into a vein, 25 to 400 mcg/kg as single doses, or was swallowed, 0.25 mg to 54 mg daily, and I could not find one published human study using the route it is sold by. The trial those numbers echo did not beat placebo, and the sponsor closed the obesity programme in February 2007.
No studied dose to compare
HGH Fragment 176-191
There is nothing to compare against. Six searches across four databases found no human study of the unmodified fragment, and the author could not establish where the 200 to 500 mcg convention came from and would not invent a lineage for it. Every human dose on record in this family belongs to AOD-9604, a modified copy sixteen daltons and two CAS numbers away: 25 to 400 mcg/kg into a vein and 0.25 mg to 54 mg by mouth, an oral range spanning a factor of 216 from bottom to top, and nothing in that spread produces 250 to 500 mcg a day under the skin of a person. FDA reported it did not identify human exposure even to AOD-9604 by the subcutaneous or transdermal route. The 250 to 500 mcg tabulated in a 2026 journal review is self-reported forum protocols, and a forum number reprinted in a journal table is still a forum number.
What people get wrong
AOD-9604
Two words carry the sales copy and neither means what it looks like. The first is GRAS, which stands for generally recognised as safe. That is a food ingredient status, not a drug approval, and this one was self-affirmed, meaning the company's own expert panel reached the conclusion, about up to 1 mg a day in food, and never asked the regulator to look. I searched FDA's GRAS Notice Inventory for AOD9604 and it returned zero records. The second is the hyphen. FDA writes the name AOD 9604, a space and no hyphen, which is the likeliest reason a search for the hyphenated name misses the warning letter it sent to a compounding pharmacy on 1 April 2020.
HGH Fragment 176-191
The expensive mistake is buying this fragment on the strength of a trial record that belongs to a modified copy of it. Six human trials were run in Australia between roughly 2001 and 2007 by a company called Metabolic Pharmaceuticals, and they survive as one summary paper written by that sponsor's own employees and consultants in a journal the PubMed database does not index, which the Food and Drug Administration summarised in December 2024. On that agency's reading, the first four showed no statistically significant weight loss. The fifth put 300 patients with obesity on the swallowed form at 1, 5, 10, 20 or 30 milligrams a day or a dummy treatment for 12 weeks, exists only as a conference abstract whose methods the agency could not find published, and its largest effect was at its smallest dose, minus 0.22 kilograms a week on 1 milligram against minus 0.07 on the dummy. The one built to settle it, OPTIONS, randomised 502 people out of 536 enrolled, adults with a body mass index of 30 to 45, on 0.25, 0.5 or 1 milligram once a day by mouth for 24 weeks against a dummy, powered at 80 percent to detect a 1.8 kilogram difference at 12 weeks. It did not separate, and on 21 February 2007 the company terminated development for obesity. Watch the doses across those last two trials, 1 to 30 milligrams a day and then 0.25 to 1 milligram: the one trial powered to find anything ran at the bottom of every swallowed dose the compound had ever been given. And the author found no study putting the fragment and the modified copy side by side, in any system, in any species.
Every figure above is carried across from each compound’s entry, which is where the citations live.
All 65 compounds on one page at what circulates vs what was studied, or pick another two to compare.