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PEPTIDE READER

Peptides for brain, mood and anxiety

4 peptides · 1 approved medicine

Two of the four entries here are Russian peptides, registered in Russia and approved nowhere else, and sold online everywhere else as research chemicals. Their evidence is thin in a specific way. The human studies are small; several compare against another drug rather than against a dummy, and every published anxiety trial of one of the two used a tranquilliser as the comparison; and much of the literature is in Russian and poorly indexed, to the point that when the US regulator reviewed one of them, the single patient study it could read in English found nothing. They sit where they do on the scale rather than lower because people genuinely have been given them and measured — it is the measuring that is thin, not the exposure. The third entry is the instructive one. It is a long-established hospital medicine used in childbirth that became famous online as the love hormone, and when the nasal spray was finally tested properly in 290 autistic children and teenagers over 24 weeks, the social-withdrawal score fell 3.7 points on oxytocin and 3.5 on a dummy spray. The fourth is a food supplement, and its mood evidence is pooled from trials that mostly enrolled people already being treated for a psychiatric illness, which is a different question from whether it lifts an ordinary low mood. An approved medicine and a proven one are not the same claim, and this page holds both kinds.

  1. Approved medicine

    Oxytocin

    Pitocin · Syntocinon

    Approved to start and strengthen labour and to control bleeding after birth; promoted separately, as a nasal spray, for trust, bonding and connection.

    The childbirth use is long-established, while the largest trial of the social claims ended level with a dummy spray.

    Category Therapeutic
  2. Tested in people, but barely

    Carnosine

    L-carnosine · beta-alanyl-L-histidine

    Sold as a supplement for ageing, exercise performance and eye health.

    Blood sugar came down against a dummy capsule in two small trials, but an enzyme in blood destroys it within minutes, most of the exercise evidence is really about beta-alanine, and pooled autism trials found no difference from placebo.

    Category Supplement
  3. Tested in people, but barely

    Selank

    TP-7 · Selanc

    Sold online as an anti-anxiety and focus spray; a prescription medicine in Russia only.

    The human studies are small, were compared only against tranquillisers rather than a dummy, and all come from the institutes that invented it.

    Category Gray market
  4. Tested in people, but barely

    Semax

    Семакс · Semax acetate

    Approved in Russia as nasal drops for poor blood flow in the brain; promoted elsewhere as a focus and memory drug.

    Every published human study used the nose, most had no comparison group, and the two the US regulator could read in English found no effect.

    Category Gray market