What these compounds are, and what the law calls them

Why does the SARM question keep getting the wrong answer?

Because the label travels as a shopping category rather than as a claim about a receptor, and a compound sold beside SARMs gets filed with them regardless of what it binds.

The worked example: MK-677, also called ibutamoren, agonizes the ghrelin receptor and prompts the pituitary to release more growth hormone. It never touches the androgen receptor, which is the receptor the term SARM is defined around.

Why the correction matters: the receptor determines what the compound does, what shows up on a test, and which regulatory documents apply to it. Getting the class wrong makes every downstream answer wrong too.

What are the three registers a compound gets classified in?

Receptor pharmacology: what the molecule binds and what happens when it does. This is settled in the published literature, and it is the only one of the three that is the same everywhere.

Statutory and regulatory status: whether a legal definition covers the molecule, and how an agency has filed it. A compound can fall outside the anabolic steroid definition and still be an unapproved new drug excluded from the supplement category.

Anti-doping status: whether an agency has listed it as prohibited, and in which class. That listing follows its own logic and does not wait for an approval or a schedule.

What does an approval actually cover?

One product, one indication, and the population the trials enrolled. An approval is narrow by construction, and reading it as a general endorsement of the molecule is where most of the confusion starts.

The worked example: bremelanotide is approved as one product for one narrow indication, and the label carries a Limitations of Use section that states in writing which populations and uses the approval does not extend to.

The general rule: what a label excludes is as load-bearing as what it includes, and it is printed in the same document. The exclusions are quoted on each page rather than summarised away.

The four pages

Each one names its documents: the trial record, the statutory text, the agency filing, or the approved label, linked so the wording can be checked directly.

Where this sits in the library

The compound record: the compound guides cover what named trials tested and reported, which is a different question from what a molecule is filed as.

What arrives with a batch: the certificate pages cover the document that reports what was measured for one batch, and the far longer list of tests it never ran.

The full index: every page published so far is listed in the library, and the sourcing rules are on the methodology page.

Last reviewed: 27 July 2026.