The Peptide Menu: What Has Human Trials and What Does Not

A large share of GLP-1 sellers now run a peptide menu alongside the injections — 152 of the 560 in our register have a structured one. The menus look alike, and they mix things with decades of human trials behind them and things with none at all. This is that menu, sorted by what has actually been tested in people.

The table

Every row was counted the same way on the same day: a plain PubMed search for the peptide, then the same search restricted to randomized controlled trials in humans. Seller counts come from the structured product menus in our own register.

The pattern in that table

Read the last column against the first and something jumps out. The peptides carrying real human trial evidence are, almost without exception, the ones that became approved drugs.

• Tesamorelin has 26 human randomized trials because it was developed into an approved product for a specific condition — excess abdominal fat in people with HIV-associated lipodystrophy.
• Bremelanotide has 14 for the same reason, in a completely different area: it was approved for hypoactive sexual desire disorder in premenopausal women.
• Sermorelin has 19, from its history as a growth-hormone agent rather than from anything to do with weight.
• BPC-157 and epitalon have zero, across 226 and 132 indexed papers respectively. The research is real and mostly preclinical — cells and animals.

Evidence attaches to a drug for an indication, not to a molecule in general.

That sentence is the one worth taking away, because it is where the marketing goes wrong even when the citations are genuine. Tesamorelin’s 26 trials are excellent evidence for what tesamorelin does in HIV-associated lipodystrophy. They are not evidence about a person without HIV buying it for belly fat, and the trials cannot be borrowed across. We look at that specific gap in tesamorelin for weight loss.

What a zero means, and what it does not

Zero human randomized trials does not mean a substance was tested and failed. It means the test has not been run. Those are different situations and it is worth keeping them apart — the register has no interest in dismissing something that might turn out to work.

But it does settle one thing. Where there are no human trials, nobody knows the dose, nobody knows the duration, and nobody knows what happens over years — including the clinic writing the prescription. Any confident claim made to you about benefit is coming from somewhere other than a trial in people. For BPC-157 specifically there is also a regulatory dimension, covered in what the FDA actually said about BPC-157.

Questions worth asking about anything on the menu

1. Which condition was it tested in, and am I that person? This single question disposes of most peptide marketing.
2. Was it tested in people, or in cells and animals? Preclinical work is real science and it is not a reason to buy something today.
3. What dose, for how long, and from what? Where there are no human trials, these numbers came from somewhere other than evidence.
4. Can it lawfully be compounded at all? Some cannot — see what cannot legally be compounded.
5. Who made it, and will they tell me? Covered in what makes a telehealth prescription legitimate.