Peptides for hormones

Approved for advanced prostate cancer, as the fast-acting alternative to the older hormone-blocking injections.

Large trials show it removes testosterone in days rather than weeks, but the trial built to prove it is kinder to the heart stopped early without an answer.

Approved to control water balance and to treat specific bleeding disorders.

It is an established prescription medicine with approved uses and decades of clinical experience.

Approved for prostate cancer, breast cancer, endometriosis, fibroids and thinning the lining of the womb before surgery.

Large randomised trials with real comparison groups, including one where adding it to radiotherapy left 58% of men alive at ten years against 40%.

Approved for fertility treatment and for low testosterone in men, and promoted separately for weight loss and for restarting testosterone after steroids.

The approved uses rest on regulator-grade evidence; for weight loss it did not beat a dummy injection, and the US label has said so since 1974.

Approved as mecasermin for a rare growth disorder in children, and sold separately online as IGF-1 LR3 for muscle growth.

The approved use compares children with their own growth before treatment, not with a placebo group; the IGF-1 LR3 sold for muscle has never been given to a person in a published study.

Approved for prostate cancer and other conditions controlled by sex hormones.

It is an established prescription medicine with approved uses and long-term clinical data.

Approved for acromegaly and symptoms caused by certain hormone-producing tumours.

It is an established prescription medicine supported by clinical trials and decades of use.

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.

Approved for growth failure in children and growth hormone deficiency in adults, and promoted far beyond that for anti-ageing, fat loss and muscle.

Randomised trials support the approved uses; in healthy adults it shifted fat and lean tissue without improving strength, endurance or function.

Approved in the United States to shrink the deep belly fat of adults with HIV-related lipodystrophy, and promoted elsewhere for fat loss, muscle and anti-ageing.

Two large placebo-controlled trials measured the fat reduction; Europe's regulator judged the same data did not show any health benefit and never approved it.

Promoted for muscle growth, better sleep and slower ageing through higher growth hormone levels.

Trials raised the hormone every time and changed nothing measurable: no more strength, no better function, no effect on the diseases it was tested against.

Approved in Japan only as a one-off injection for diagnosing growth hormone deficiency; promoted online for muscle, appetite and recovery.

It reliably releases growth hormone and demonstrably makes people eat more, but no study has ever measured muscle, strength or body fat in a person taking it.

Promoted for muscle growth and for appetite, and sold as a research chemical.

Human studies measured hormones in blood for a couple of hours after a single dose; none tested it as a treatment for anything.

Promoted for libido, fertility and testosterone, and sold as a compounded injection.

It shifts reproductive hormones within minutes, but the one placebo-controlled course lasting weeks failed to raise testosterone.

Sold by anti-ageing and hormone clinics, and online, to raise growth hormone for muscle, fat loss and sleep.

It was an approved medicine until 2009, but the uses it is sold for now were either never measured or measured once and found unchanged.