Metabolic and GLP-1

5-Amino-1MQ

Sold as a peptide, and every study I could find is a dish or a rodent

7 sections

Top of article
What it actually is
What it is supposed to do
What people take it for
The dose question
How to check you have the right molecule
What people get wrong
What is known about harm

What circulates: 50 to 150 mg a day by mouth, convention rather than evidence
What was studied: No human dose I could find, by any route
The gap: No published human dose to compare against
How long it lasts: Rat and mouse figures, and none in a person. The one dedicated study of what the compound does after it goes in is in rats, reporting a terminal half-life of about 3.8 hours into a vein and about 6.9 hours by mouth, with 38.4 percent of a swallowed dose reaching the blood. A mouse experiment also ran blood level arms, into a vein at 5 mg/kg, by mouth at 30 mg/kg and under the skin at 25 mg/kg. I could not find any published human data of that kind. What a swallowed capsule does to a person's blood levels is not something I could find published.

What it actually is

5-Amino-1MQ is sold on peptide websites and shelved with the peptides, and it is not a peptide. A peptide is a short chain of amino acids, the small units proteins are built from, and this has none of them and no peptide bonds. It is a small organic chemical that carries a permanent positive electrical charge, listed as 5-amino-1-methylquinolinium, formula C10H11N2+, molecular weight 159.21, CAS number 685079-15-6. The powder actually sold is the iodide salt of it, molecular weight 286.11. The usual retail item is a capsule you swallow, and it is compounded as an injectable besides.

What it is supposed to do

It blocks an enzyme called nicotinamide N-methyltransferase, or NNMT. That enzyme uses up two things at once, a building block of NAD+, the molecule cells use to carry energy around, and SAM, the cell's universal methyl donor, so blocking it is supposed to leave more of both. In cultured mouse fat cells with the compound added to the liquid they grow in, that is what happened: an NAD+ rise of roughly 1.2 to 1.6 fold across 1 to 60 micromolar over 24 hours. That is the whole of the published NAD+ evidence. The SAM half was weaker even in the dish, significant only at 30 micromolar, with the p value at 60 micromolar coming in at 0.06. I could not find any published measurement of NAD+ or SAM in an animal given this compound, so the mechanism has been shown in cells, the fat loss has been shown in mice, and never in the same organism.

What people take it for

It is sold and talked about for fat loss and for raising NAD+, the energy carrying molecule. That is what it is sold on, not what it has been shown to do in a person, because I could not find a published human study of it by any route. The fat loss claim comes from obese male mice given daily injections: more than a 30 percent decrease in fat cell size after eleven days, and about 29.3 percent fat mass loss over seven weeks in a second experiment where both groups were also switched to a lean diet, diet alone giving 2.9 percent.

The dose question

What circulates: 50 to 150 mg a day by mouth, convention rather than evidence
What was studied: No human dose I could find, by any route; PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, the EU register and Europe PMC, no human study in any of them

No studied dose to compare

There is nothing to compare against, because I could not find a published human study of this compound by any route. Every efficacy result came out of a needle in a rodent, dosed per kilogram of animal, one experiment at three injections a day, and the retail item is a capsule swallowed once. The circulating number is convention rather than evidence and I found no derivation for it. Under the same name, retail listings sell capsules at 500 micrograms, one hundredth to one three hundredth of the protocol dose.

Reported because it is what people use. Nothing here recommends any amount.

How long it lasts

Rat and mouse figures, and none in a person. The one dedicated study of what the compound does after it goes in is in rats, reporting a terminal half-life of about 3.8 hours into a vein and about 6.9 hours by mouth, with 38.4 percent of a swallowed dose reaching the blood. A mouse experiment also ran blood level arms, into a vein at 5 mg/kg, by mouth at 30 mg/kg and under the skin at 25 mg/kg. I could not find any published human data of that kind. What a swallowed capsule does to a person's blood levels is not something I could find published.

Route studied

In rodents, mostly injection under the skin, dosed per kilogram of animal: 20 mg/kg three times a day for eleven days in one experiment, 40 mg/kg a day for seven weeks in another, 10 and 32 mg/kg a day for 30 days in a third. Rodent blood level arms also used into a vein at 5 mg/kg, by mouth at 30 mg/kg and under the skin at 25 mg/kg. The mechanism work was cultured mouse fat cells with the compound added to the medium.

Route used

Swallowed as a capsule, once. It is also compounded as an injectable.

How to check you have the right molecule

Two checks, and neither needs a laboratory. The first is the number on the listing. The active species weighs 159.21 and the powder people actually buy is the iodide salt at 286.11, which is also the name FDA used in writing about it, so a listing quoting 159 is quoting the charged fragment rather than the material in the jar. Compare against PubChem CID 950107 for the cation and CID 66522933 for the salt, and against CAS 685079-15-6. The second is the citation. Seller pages describe studies that I could not find: RealPeptides.co describes a twelve week randomised placebo controlled study at the University of Copenhagen in 2024, a Phase 1 safety study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism in 2024 and a 90 day rat toxicology study in Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology in 2021, quotes participant level side effect percentages, and cites no PMID, DOI or NCT for any of it. A PubMed search restricted to those two journals returned three papers, from 2003, 2015 and 2020, none of them the studies described. Also strike off Kraus and colleagues, Nature 2014, which vendor pages routinely offer as evidence: it knocked the gene down in mouse fat and liver with an antisense oligonucleotide, which is not the same intervention as blocking the protein with a small molecule.

Walked through on two real certificates in how to read a certificate of analysis.

What people get wrong

Two mistakes, and they cost different things. The first is the strength on the jar. The figure that circulates is 50 to 150 mg a day by mouth, usually 50 mg for one to two weeks then 100 mg, while retail listings sell capsules at 500 micrograms, half a milligram, under the same name. That is one hundredth to one three hundredth of the protocol number on identical labelling, so two people saying they run 5-Amino-1MQ can be describing amounts two hundredfold apart. The second is treating the mouse results as though they transfer. Every efficacy figure came from an injection in a rodent, mostly under the skin, at milligrams per kilogram, one experiment at three injections a day, and the product is a capsule swallowed once. The nearest thing to a bridge anybody has published is 38.4 percent oral bioavailability in a rat.

What is known about harm

The only published tolerability statement I could find is one line in the 2018 mouse paper, no observable adverse effects over eleven days with nine animals per group, and that paper contains no formal toxicology. I found no human safety data, no peer reviewed case report of harm, and no independent analysis of what is in grey market product, since the purity numbers in circulation are vendor commissioned certificates. A 2026 review of this class of enzyme blockers describes the safety profiles of these compounds as unknown. On the regulatory side, on 20 January 2026 the Office of Compounding Quality and Compliance at FDA's drug centre wrote to GenoGenix LLC of Boca Raton, Florida, Warning Letter 718739, stating that 5-amino-1-methylquinolinium iodide is not eligible for compounding under section 503B because it is not on the list of bulk ingredients those pharmacies may make medicines from. I found no approval from the American, European, British, Australian or Canadian medicines regulators anywhere, and I could not find it in the Dietary Supplement Ingredient Directory or in any GRAS notice or new dietary ingredient notification.

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