Peptides for ageing
8 peptides · T5 4 · T4 1 · T3 2 · T2 1
Ageing is the area where the gap between the marketing and the evidence is widest, and this page is the demonstration. Eight entries, and not one of them was approved, or even designed, to slow ageing — four are approved medicines, each for something specific and none of it ageing. What they rest on instead is an approval for something else entirely, two-year trials that measured body composition, unreplicated work from a single research tradition, and animal data. Growth hormone is the clearest case on the page: the 1990 paper the anti-ageing industry still rests on gave it to twelve men, was neither randomised nor blinded, and measured no strength or function of any kind — and when eighteen randomised trials in healthy older adults were later pooled, fat and lean tissue moved, strength and everyday function had been measured too patchily across the trials to pool at all, and the reviewers concluded it cannot be recommended for ageing. The only claim here about living longer comes from that one research tradition and has never been repeated by anyone outside it.
- Approved medicine
Somatropin
Recombinant human growth hormone · rhGH
TherapeuticApproved 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 medicine
SS-31 (elamipretide)
Elamipretide · Elamipretide hydrochloride
TherapeuticApproved in the United States to improve muscle strength in Barth syndrome, an ultra-rare inherited disease, and sold online as a mitochondria and anti-ageing peptide.
Its largest trials, in mitochondrial myopathy, heart failure and eye disease, all failed; the approval rests on a strength measure that did not move against a dummy injection.
- Approved medicine
Tesamorelin
Egrifta · Egrifta SV
TherapeuticApproved 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.
- Approved medicine
Thymosin alpha-1
Thymalfasin · Thymalfasinum
TherapeuticApproved in Italy only as a helper for flu vaccination in adults with a weak immune system, and promoted far more widely for immunity, inflammation, long COVID and ageing.
The largest trial, in 1,106 adults with sepsis, matched dummy injections on every outcome including the immune marker the drug is supposed to raise.
- Still being tested in people
MK-677 (ibutamoren)
Ibutamoren · Ibutamoren mesylate
Gray marketPromoted 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.
- Tested in people, but barely
Epitalon
Epithalon · Epithalone
Gray marketPromoted for slowing ageing and extending lifespan.
The human studies are small, come from one research tradition and have not been independently repeated.
- Tested in people, but barely
Sermorelin
Geref · sermorelin acetate
Gray marketSold 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.
- Only tested on animals
MOTS-c
mitochondrial-derived peptide MOTS-c · MDP
Gray marketPromoted for weight loss, exercise performance and longer life.
The published evidence comes from cells and animals; there are no completed treatment trials in people.