Growth hormone
Ipamorelin
Two human trials, and nobody has seen the second
- What circulates
- 200 to 900 mcg per day, under the skin
- What was studied
- About 4.2 mg per day, into a vein
- How they compare
- People take less than what studies gave
- As a medicine
- Never an approved medicineIts drug program died two trials in; the second was never published.
What it actually is
What it is supposed to do
What people take it for
The dose question
- What circulates
- 200 to 900 mcg per day, under the skin
- What was studied
- About 4.2 mg per day, into a vein
- The published Helsinn trial, which missed its endpoint
People take less than studies gave
Five to twenty one times smaller, and by a route I found no human study of. The smaller number is smaller in a unit no one has converted.
Reported because it is what people use. Nothing here recommends any amount.
How long it lasts
About two hours. That figure comes from a single study in healthy men where it went into a vein. I could not find a measurement of how long it lasts in a person injecting it under the skin.
Route studied
Into a vein, in hospital
Route used
Under the skin, at home
How to check you have the right molecule
Two separate laboratory groups testing black market material found a different molecule in it: ipamorelin with one extra building block stuck on the front, called Gly-ipamorelin. Real ipamorelin weighs 711.9, and that extra piece adds 57.05, so the altered version weighs about 768.9. A certificate that states a weight anywhere in the high 760s has told on the product. On the machine reading that testing labs print, real ipamorelin shows a peak at 712.4 and the altered version shows 769.4; on methods that read the version of the molecule carrying two charges, real is 356.7 and altered is 385.2. Neither study was checking vials against their labels, so this says nothing about how common the problem is, only how to spot it.
Walked through on two real certificates in how to read a certificate of analysis.
What people get wrong
What is known about harm
The arithmetic
Ipamorelin is sold in 2 mg, 5 mg and 10 mg vials. Mixing errors put people an order of magnitude off using a perfectly good vial, and the arithmetic is simple enough to check yourself.
| Vial | Water | Concentration | In 10 units |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 mg | 1 mL | 2 mg/mL | 200 mcg |
| 2 mg | 2 mL | 1 mg/mL | 100 mcg |
| 2 mg | 3 mL | 0.67 mg/mL | 67 mcg |
| 5 mg | 1 mL | 5 mg/mL | 500 mcg |
| 5 mg | 2 mL | 2.5 mg/mL | 250 mcg |
| 5 mg | 3 mL | 1.67 mg/mL | 167 mcg |
| 10 mg | 1 mL | 10 mg/mL | 1 mg |
| 10 mg | 2 mL | 5 mg/mL | 500 mcg |
| 10 mg | 3 mL | 3.33 mg/mL | 333 mcg |
10 units is 0.1 mL on a U-100 insulin syringe, whatever is in it. For any other combination, or to see the arithmetic worked out, use the calculator.
To run your own numbers, use the reconstitution calculator.
Set against
Others in Growth hormone
Trials cited
- NCT01280344
Safety and Efficacy of Ipamorelin Compared to Placebo for the Recovery of Gastrointestinal Function
Completed, Helsinn Therapeutics (U.S.), Inc, first posted 20 January 2011.
Finished May 2014, 320 patients at 45 hospitals, and has never reported a result.
Registry details are from ClinicalTrials.gov, the United States government trial registry, as it read on 14 September 2026.
The full entry
Everything on this page is a summary. Read the full entry on Ipamorelin for the citations, the studies, and the reasoning behind every figure above.
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