SARMs

GW-0742

Cardarine's sibling, with its reputation and not its data

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: I found no dosing figure I could trace to a source
What was studied: A single 15 mg dose by mouth, in a doping control excretion study
The gap: No published human dose to compare against
How long it lasts: I could not find one in a person.

What it actually is

GW-0742 is not a SARM and does not act on the androgen receptor. It acts on PPAR delta, a receptor involved in how cells handle fat and energy, and it is chemically cardarine with one hydrogen swapped for a fluorine. The 2026 anti-doping Prohibited List names cardarine and never names this compound anywhere in its 26 pages.

What it is supposed to do

It activates PPAR delta, the same receptor as cardarine. That is the basis of the endurance and fat handling claims made for both.

What people take it for

Endurance and fat loss, almost entirely on cardarine's reputation rather than on anything published about this compound.

The dose question

What circulates: I found no dosing figure I could trace to a source
What was studied: A single 15 mg dose by mouth, in a doping control excretion study; Not an efficacy trial; it measured how long the compound stays detectable

No studied dose to compare

There is nothing to compare against, and the thing to watch is what gets carried across rather than what gets scaled up. This is cardarine with one hydrogen swapped for a fluorine, acting on the same receptor, and the two year cancer studies people cite belong to cardarine: oral gavage in rats and mice over 104 weeks, with neoplastic findings in multiple tissues at all doses. No equivalent study of GW-0742 turned up in the searches, and one conference abstract has it reducing skin tumours in mice. The 2026 anti-doping list names cardarine and never names this one.

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

How long it lasts

I could not find one in a person.

Route studied

No efficacy trial in a person. It has been given to people once in a published study, a single 15 mg dose by mouth in a doping control excretion experiment that measured how long it stays detectable, which is not a trial of whether it does anything.

Route used

By mouth. I found no dosing figure I could trace to a source.

How to check you have the right molecule

Check which compound the evidence you are shown is actually about. Cardarine is GW-501516; this is GW-0742. PubChem gives cardarine as C21H18F3NO3S2 at 453.5 and GW-0742 as C21H17F4NO3S2 at 471.5. They share a receptor and they are not the same molecule.

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

What people get wrong

The cancer findings people carry across belong to cardarine, not to this compound. Those were two year studies: oral gavage in rats and in mice over 104 weeks, with neoplastic findings in multiple tissues at all doses in the rat study, and stomach tumours at all doses in the mouse one. No equivalent study of GW-0742 turned up in the searches, and a conference abstract in the same volume has GW-0742 reducing skin tumours in mice. Sharing a receptor is not sharing a toxicology file, in either direction.

What is known about harm

The searches behind the class page found no published human harm record for GW-0742 itself. One animal study reports liver enlargement and muscle damage in mice over ten days at what the authors call toxicological dosages, and those authors conclude the effects were predominantly mediated by cross-activation of a different receptor.

Others in SARMs

Everything on this page is a summary. The citations, the studies and the reasoning live in the full entry.

Read the full entry on GW-0742

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