Two approvals, neither for an adult, both gone in 2009
What it actually is
Your brain makes a signal called growth hormone releasing hormone, a chain of 44 of the building blocks that proteins are made from. Sermorelin is the first 29 of those building blocks, capped at the tail end, with nothing swapped out anywhere along the chain, so it is a shortened copy of the body's own signal rather than a new invention. It was a real approved medicine in the United States twice, under the brand name Geref and held by the company EMD Serono: once as a hospital test of whether the gland at the base of the skull can put out growth hormone, approved 28 December 1990, and once as a treatment for children who were not growing, approved 26 September 1997. Neither approval was for an adult. The company wrote to the regulator in July and December of 2008 saying it was discontinuing the product, approval of both was withdrawn effective 18 June 2009, and on 4 March 2013 the Food and Drug Administration determined that neither had been withdrawn for reasons of safety or effectiveness. That last sentence is what the compounding pharmacy trade stands on, though the article notes the determination came under a rule governing generic applications rather than compounding, and that FDA has published no determination that sermorelin qualifies.
What it is supposed to do
It asks rather than supplies. It makes the small gland at the base of the skull release the body's own growth hormone, and that is what raises the amount in the blood. Where the record thins out is whether anything follows from that in an adult. In the only adult treatment study I could find, 11 healthy men aged 64 to 76 who started with a low blood growth marker, the growth hormone released overnight did go up and several strength measures went up with it, but insulin like growth factor 1, the blood marker that growth hormone normally drives up, did not move, and neither did weight, waist to hip ratio, the muscle and fat readings from a body scan, blood sugar or blood fats.
What people take it for
The sales copy is for adult body recomposition, meaning more muscle and less fat, and it is most often sold paired with another peptide called ipamorelin, a pairing I found no published trial of. Two of the claims that circulate can be traced. One is a 2021 paper said to be in the journal Aging Cell, in which 78 adults aged 55 to 70 took 200 micrograms under the skin before bed for 24 weeks for an 8.4 percent gain in lean mass and a 6.2 percent cut in deep abdominal fat. That description carries no PubMed identification number and no authors, and I found no such paper. The other points at a real study, Khorram's, in 19 subjects aged 55 to 71 given 10 micrograms per kilogram of body weight under the skin nightly for 16 weeks, where the growth marker went up and lean body mass went up in the men only. It did not use sermorelin. It used the same 29 building blocks with the one at position 27 swapped for a different one, which makes it another molecule again. Searching on 4 August 2026 returned 331 PubMed records for sermorelin and 29 of them filtered to clinical trials, none a randomised controlled trial of this peptide in healthy adults.
The dose question
What circulates
200 to 300 mcg under the skin nightly, titrated toward 500 mcg
What was studied
2 mg nightly, or 2,000 mcg
Vittone 1997, the only adult treatment study the author could find, 11 men, six weeks, no control group
The convention sits at about one seventh to one tenth of both figures it could be held against: the pediatric label dose of 30 mcg/kg scales to roughly 2,100 mcg in a 70 kg adult, and the one adult study used a flat 2 mg. Grey market doses normally drift upward. This one drifted down, and there is no approved adult labelling and no adult dose finding study behind it.
Reported because it is what people use. Nothing here recommends any amount.
How long it lasts
Two figures are in the record and they do not agree. The approved label said 11 to 12 minutes, whether it went into a vein or under the skin. A 2026 review in the journal Frontiers in Endocrinology tabulates about 4.3 minutes, give or take 1.4, and I could not locate the primary source behind the shorter figure.
Route studied
Into a vein at 1 microgram per kilogram of body weight, which was the hospital test the first approval covered. Under the skin nightly at 30 micrograms per kilogram in the children's treatment programme, and 2 milligrams under the skin nightly in the one adult treatment study I could find. Of the two trials that put it head to head against growth hormone in children, one gave it as a continuous infusion and the other gave it under the skin split into three doses a day. They disagreed. Growth hormone won the infusion comparison, 14.6 cm a year against 9.2, and in the one injected under the skin the high dose peptide arm came out comparable to growth hormone.
Route used
Injected under the skin at home, at night before bed, often five nights on and two nights off. There is no approved adult labelling for any route.
How to check you have the right molecule
This entry publishes no molecular weight and no laboratory fingerprint to hold a certificate of analysis against, so the check is on the words on the certificate. Sermorelin is the first 29 building blocks of the 44 unit body signal, capped at the tail, with nothing substituted along the chain. The thing to look hardest at is anything sold as CJC-1295 without DAC. Go and look at the certificate of analysis and ask one question of it: does it name an actual peptide, sermorelin or modified growth hormone releasing factor 1 to 29, or does it simply hand the product name back to you? If it names neither molecule, it has told you nothing about what is in the bottle.
The mistake that costs money is thinking you have bought sermorelin when you have bought CJC-1295 without DAC. The paper that named CJC-1295 describes a tetrasubstituted form of the same 29 building blocks, meaning four of them were swapped out, at positions 2, 8, 15 and 27, with an added lysine based attachment on the end that fastens the molecule to a protein in the blood. Cut that attachment off and the four swaps are still sitting there, and the result has a name of its own, modified growth hormone releasing factor 1 to 29. So what the market sells as CJC-1295 without DAC is sermorelin with four building blocks changed rather than sermorelin itself. Anything bought under that name is worth taking the certificate of analysis to, to see whether it names an actual peptide or gives you the product name back.
What is known about harm
This entry carries no side effect tally from any of the trials, so what is known about harm here is thin rather than clean. The one measured thing is antibodies. Thirty nine of the forty children on the two peptide arms of Chen's 1993 trial developed antibodies against the signal, and nobody has looked for them in adults injecting nightly for months, which is the population using it now. It is also on the 2026 World Anti-Doping Agency Prohibited List at S2.2.4, banned at all times.
The arithmetic
Sermorelin is sold in 0.5 mg and 1 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
0.5 mg
1 mL
0.5 mg/mL
50 mcg
0.5 mg
2 mL
0.25 mg/mL
25 mcg
0.5 mg
3 mL
0.17 mg/mL
17 mcg
1 mg
1 mL
1 mg/mL
100 mcg
1 mg
2 mL
0.5 mg/mL
50 mcg
1 mg
3 mL
0.33 mg/mL
33 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.
Everything on this page is a summary. The citations, the studies and the reasoning live in the full entry.