Compound reference

Ipamorelin Dosage Guide 2026: The Research vs Reported Use

By the Decadewise team Education only Last updated 3 August 2026 9 cited sources

Short answer

The selective secretagogue: ipamorelin is a pentapeptide ghrelin-receptor agonist that released GH without raising ACTH or cortisol in the discovery work, at 200x the GH-releasing dose.

Three papers, and that is the lot: a 1999 pharmacokinetics study, a 2014 phase 2 trial for postoperative ileus, and a 2015 intranasal study.

The research doses: the 1999 study tested five intravenous infusion rates, 4.21 to 140.45 nmol/kg over 15 minutes; the 2014 trial ran 0.03 mg/kg intravenous, twice daily, for up to 7 days.

What the pharmacokinetics showed: growth hormone release appeared at every dose level tested, peaking about 0.67 hours after infusion.

A vein against a skin fold: the studies dosed intravenously by bodyweight, forum posts subcutaneously in flat micrograms, and the two never met in a trial.

What the paper trail amounts to: an FDA compounding review rather than an approval, and a registry holding no obesity or body-composition trial. Every research figure here comes from the cited papers, DOIs at the bottom.

The calculator

The four things it needs: a vial size, a water amount, a syringe type and a dose. Back come the concentration, the volume, and what that volume reads as on the syringe.

Units converter

Converts the numbers you type. It does not recommend a dose.

Vial amount mg Bacteriostatic water mL Syringe type Barrel size Dose you want to convert mg

Concentration5 mg per mL

Volume to drawenter a dose

Reads as

Arithmetic only. This is arithmetic on the numbers entered. It has no knowledge of any real vial, reconstitution, or syringe.

On this page

Short answer Calculator What did the research do? Reported use Research dose vs internet dose How the units math works How many units is 200 mcg? What's not known yet? The safety picture How this page is sourced The disclaimer

Peer-reviewed research data

What did the research do?

The whole record: three studies that gave ipamorelin to people, published in 1999, 2014, and 2015. One mapped what the drug does in the body, one tested it for postoperative ileus, a gut complication of surgery, and one took the intranasal route.

The discovery paper: Raun et al., European Journal of Endocrinology, 1998, out of Novo Nordisk's research program. Ipamorelin is a pentapeptide built in a growth-hormone-releasing-peptide series, and it matched GHRP-6 for growth hormone release in their models.

The selectivity claim: GHRP-6 and GHRP-2 also push ACTH and cortisol up. Ipamorelin did not, even at doses more than 200-fold above the growth hormone dose, which is why the authors called it the first selective secretagogue of its class.

The phase 1 study: Gobburu et al., Pharmaceutical Research, 1999, ran five intravenous infusion rates, 4.21 to 140.45 nmol/kg over 15 minutes, with eight healthy men at each level. FDA's 2024 briefing document splits that eight: six received ipamorelin and two received placebo in each of the five groups. The paper's own abstract gives only the eight, so a reader working from it alone would count forty men on the drug when the number is thirty.

One number in that briefing does not add up, and we are not going to smooth it over: the same passage says forty-eight subjects were enrolled, while five groups of eight is forty. FDA also writes the second infusion rate as 14.04 nmol/kg where the paper's abstract has 14.02. Both documents were pulled on 30 July 2026, PubMed HTTP 200 and the FDA PDF HTTP 200. We have no basis to pick a side, so both are printed. The six-and-two split comes from FDA alone; the paper's abstract does not break the eight down at all.

What that modeling produced: dose-proportional pharmacokinetics, a terminal half-life of about 2 hours, and a single growth hormone episode peaking 0.67 hours after infusion. Release appeared at every dose level.

Study	Design	Dose	Population
Gobburu 1999, phase 1	dose escalation, pharmacokinetics	4.21 to 140.45 nmol/kg, intravenous, over 15 minutes	8 healthy men per dose level in the paper; FDA's briefing splits each eight into 6 on ipamorelin and 2 on placebo
Beck 2014, phase 2	double-blind, placebo-controlled	0.03 mg/kg, intravenous, twice daily, days 1 to 7 or hospital discharge	114 bowel-resection patients analyzed
Semenistaya 2015, anti-doping method	urinary metabolite identification, uncontrolled	intranasal; the paper states no amount, only that each compound was given once and urine was collected for 2 days	one volunteer per compound

Every published study we found in which ipamorelin was given to people. Gobburu et al. 1999; Beck et al. 2014; Semenistaya et al. 2015.

The phase 2 result: median time to a first tolerated meal was 25.3 hours on ipamorelin against 32.6 on placebo. The gap was not statistically significant (p=0.15), and no efficacy measure reached significance.

The safety readout: treatment-emergent adverse events came in at 87.5% on drug and 94.8% on placebo, in a surgical inpatient population.

Why ileus: the only controlled human trials ran in postoperative bowel recovery, following rodent work on gut transit after surgery (Venkova et al., 2009). Body composition was never the trial target.

published human studies, ever

114

patients analyzed in the phase 2 trial

0.67 h

to the growth hormone peak after infusion

2015

the year of the last human trial

Human study record: Gobburu 1999, Beck 2014, Semenistaya 2015, from a PubMed search for ipamorelin[Title/Abstract] AND humans[MeSH Terms], scanned 20 July 2026 and re-run 31 July 2026, 23 records, every title and abstract read.

Community reports, not a protocol

What do people report running?

Where this section came from: dosage forums, Reddit threads, and the schedule pages that rank for this query. Not a trial, and not a log of ours.

The range those threads print: 100 to 300 mcg per subcutaneous injection.

The rhythm they describe: once daily before bed dominates, with some splitting it into two or three injections across the day.

The timing rules attached to that: fasted, two to three hours after food, or right before sleep. The posted logic is that food blunts the growth hormone pulse, which no trial has checked.

The compound it arrives attached to: the threads pair it with CJC-1295, with or without DAC, on the posted rationale that a GHRH analog and a ghrelin mimetic cover both sides of the growth hormone axis.

The block lengths posted: eight to twelve week runs, and five days on with two off, over and over.

The one thing the posts and the papers agree on: none of these numbers came out of a controlled trial. Not one of the three studies above was measuring body composition, and not one of them used the route the posts describe.

Is the research dose the same as the internet dose?

Why the two columns below never meet: the studies dosed by bodyweight, through a vein, for gut recovery. The posts dose a flat number, under the skin, for something the studies never looked at. Nothing published bridges that, so nothing here does either.

What the research doses are for

The two questions they were built to answer: how the drug behaves in the body and what it does to growth hormone, in 1999; and whether it speeds gut recovery after bowel surgery, in 2014.

What those two add up to: a pharmacology map and a trial that missed its endpoint. Not a recommendation.

What people run online

What the threads print instead: flat microgram amounts, 100 to 300 mcg per injection, chosen for a growth hormone pulse rather than for gut motility.

The route gap: the studies dosed intravenously and scaled by bodyweight; the posts dose subcutaneously at a flat number. At 0.03 mg/kg, the trial dose for a 70kg patient works out to 2.1mg per infusion, and nobody has run the community pattern in a controlled trial.

0.03 mg/kg into a vein for bowel recovery, and 100 to 300mcg under the skin for growth hormone, are not two versions of one number.

What is left once the numbers run out: the trials answered gut motility and pharmacokinetics. The outcomes ipamorelin is sold for were not endpoints in either study, so the published record has no result to report on them, favorable or otherwise.

How does the units math work?

The ipamorelin version of the problem: the papers wrote doses in nanomoles per kilogram, the posts write flat micrograms, and the vial is labeled in milligrams. Only the last two can be reconciled by arithmetic, and that is what follows, attached to no dose.

The 10mg vial at 2mL: 10mg of powder in 2mL of bacteriostatic water is 5mg per mL, or 5,000mcg per mL.

Fifty micrograms to a unit: a U-100 barrel divides one milliliter into a hundred units, so a single unit measures 0.01mL, which on a 5mg per mL solution is 50mcg. From there: 100mcg is 2 units, 200mcg is 4 units, 300mcg is 6 units.

The same vial, half the water: at 1mL the concentration doubles to 10mg per mL, with nothing else changed.

Every mark is worth double: a mark now holds 100mcg rather than 50mcg, so the identical 200mcg reads as 2 units, not 4.

The 5mg vial goes the other way: in 2mL it sits at 2.5mg per mL, 25mcg to a mark, and the same 200mcg reads as 8 units.

Which is what a bare "4 units" leaves out: the reading is stable and the amount is not, so the same four marks hold 200mcg on one of those mixes and 400mcg on another. The barrel is not hiding the difference; it was never told about it.

Three common vial setups, on a U-100 syringe

Vial and water	Concentration	1 unit equals	What the micrograms read as
10mg vial + 2mL	5mg per mL (5,000mcg per mL)	50mcg	100mcg is 2 units, 200mcg is 4 units, 300mcg is 6 units
10mg vial + 1mL	10mg per mL	100mcg	200mcg is 2 units, not 4
5mg vial + 2mL	2.5mg per mL	25mcg	200mcg is 8 units

Syringe scale, before any concentration math

Syringe	Units per mL	1 unit equals
U-100	100 units per mL	0.01mL
U-40	40 units per mL	0.025mL

One ratio, 0.025 divided by 0.01, fixed by the printing. Every unit count worked out above sits on the first row.

The posted number leaves out a second thing as well: everything above holds the syringe constant, and the scale table shows that the same printed "4 units" is 2.5 times the volume on a U-40 barrel as on a U-100. So a thread that names a unit count without naming a water volume has also, silently, assumed a barrel, and neither assumption is recoverable from the reading itself.

How many units is 200 mcg of ipamorelin?

Concentration decides it: at 5mg per mL (a 10mg vial plus 2mL of water), 200mcg reads as 4 units on a U-100 syringe. At 10mg per mL (the same vial plus 1mL), that same 200mcg reads as 2 units.

And on the smaller vial: at 2.5mg per mL (a 5mg vial plus 2mL), it reads as 8 units, four times the count above.

Three answers, one question, and the spread is fourfold: 2, 4 and 8 units are all correct readings of 200mcg, and which one applies is decided by a number that was never part of the question. Our dose math index takes that apart variable by variable.

What's not known yet?

A nomination, never a product: ipamorelin reaches the FDA record as a bulk drug substance nominated for compounding, not as an approved product under any name, as of July 2026. The agency also lists ipamorelin acetate in category 2 of its interim compounding policies, added 29 September 2023 on the 503B side, and again on its list of nominations later withdrawn.

What the registry shows: two registered phase 2 trials, both completed, both sponsored by Helsinn Therapeutics (U.S.). NCT00672074 enrolled 117 in postoperative ileus, and NCT01280344 enrolled 320 in recovery of gastrointestinal function. Nothing is recruiting, and the larger trial's results were never published in the peer-reviewed record we could find.

The compounding angle: FDA's compounding advisory committee took up ipamorelin acetate and ipamorelin free base on 29 October 2024, under docket FDA-2024-N-4188, with growth hormone deficiency and postoperative ileus as the uses the agency reviewed. The 503A bulks list itself lives at 21 CFR 216.23 and names six substances, none of them a peptide, so ipamorelin is not one a 503A pharmacy can compound from under that provision. The committee's session on 23 and 24 July 2026 covered seven other compounds and not this one.

Where the record simply stops:

No human trial for fat loss, muscle gain, sleep, or anti-aging. Those outcomes have never been studied in people.
No new peer-reviewed study has given it to a person since 2015. The later records in that search are reviews, analytical-method papers and laboratory chemistry.
No verified data on the community subcutaneous patterns or the CJC-1295 stack. None of it has been run in a controlled trial.

The gap the registry cannot close: both registered trials finished and neither is recruiting, so the record above is not provisional. It is the record.

Everything upstream of the arithmetic: identity, purity, sterility, and whether the milligrams on the label are the milligrams in the vial.

Our first worry, ahead of the arithmetic: not which microgram figure to use, but whether the vial holds ipamorelin at all. That question sits upstream of every unit count on this page, and nothing here can answer it.

How this page is sourced

Two kinds of source, both read directly: the trial figures came off the cited abstracts, and the regulatory lines off the FDA meeting records, the Code of Federal Regulations and the registry entries printed below. None of it came through a summary.

What we got wrong until 30 July 2026, stated plainly: this page said the 1999 phase 1 dosed eight healthy men per level. Eight per level is what the paper's own abstract says, so the citation was never wrong, but "dosed" put all eight on the drug when FDA's briefing document records six on ipamorelin and two on placebo in each group. The corrected paragraph prints the paper's eight, the agency's split, and the two places where the two documents disagree, rather than choosing the tidier number.

Nine sources, printed rather than named in passing: the papers carry their DOIs and PubMed IDs where those exist, and the regulator and registry documents carry their identifiers. Each is listed below with its identifier, and every figure on this page traces back to one of them.

The standard those citations are held to: it is published on the methodology page, corrections included, so the rule and the page it governs are never more than one click apart.

Last reviewed: 19 July 2026.

1
Raun K, Hansen BS, Johansen NL, et al. Ipamorelin, the first selective growth hormone secretagogue. Eur J Endocrinol. 1998;139(5):552-561. doi:10.1530/eje.0.1390552. PMID 9849822.
2
Gobburu JV, Agersø H, Jusko WJ, et al. Pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic modeling of ipamorelin, a growth hormone releasing peptide, in human volunteers. Pharm Res. 1999;16(9):1412-1416. doi:10.1023/a:1018955126402. PMID 10496658.
3
Venkova K, Mann W, Nelson R, et al. Efficacy of ipamorelin, a novel ghrelin mimetic, in a rodent model of postoperative ileus. J Pharmacol Exp Ther. 2009;329(3):1110-1116. doi:10.1124/jpet.108.149211. PMID 19289567.
4
Beck DE, Sweeney WB, McCarter MD; Ipamorelin 201 Study Group. Prospective, randomized, controlled, proof-of-concept study of the ghrelin mimetic ipamorelin for the management of postoperative ileus in bowel resection patients. Int J Colorectal Dis. 2014;29(12):1527-1534. doi:10.1007/s00384-014-2030-8. PMID 25331030.
5
Semenistaya E, Zvereva I, Thomas A, Thevis M, Krotov G, Rodchenkov G. Determination of growth hormone releasing peptides metabolites in human urine after nasal administration of GHRP-1, GHRP-2, GHRP-6, Hexarelin, and Ipamorelin. Drug Test Anal. 2015;7(10):919-25. doi:10.1002/dta.1787. PMID 25869809.
6
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. October 29, 2024 Meeting of the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee: meeting notice and agenda, listing ipamorelin-related bulk drug substances (ipamorelin acetate and ipamorelin free base) with growth hormone deficiency and postoperative ileus as the uses reviewed. Docket FDA-2024-N-4188. The Gobburu arm split, six on ipamorelin and two on placebo in each of five groups, and the forty-eight enrolled figure are in its pharmacokinetic data section. Re-retrieved 30 July 2026, HTTP 200. Meeting page, FDA briefing document, ipamorelin.
7
U.S. Food and Drug Administration. July 23-24, 2026 Meeting of the Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee: agenda covering BPC-157, KPV, TB-500, MOTS-c, emideltide, semax and epitalon. Docket FDA-2025-N-6895. Ipamorelin is not on it. Retrieved 29 July 2026, HTTP 200. Re-retrieved 31 July 2026, HTTP 200, 56,200 bytes. The agenda is split across the two days and that split is why a reader can conclude the list is wrong: on 23 July the committee takes BPC-157, KPV, TB-500 and MOTs-C, and on 24 July emideltide, named on the agenda as also referred to as delta sleep inducing peptide, semax and epitalon. The briefing and presentation documents posted for the meeting cover the 23 July four only, so a search of those PDFs alone returns nothing for the other three. Ipamorelin returns zero matches in the meeting page and in both PDFs. Meeting page.
8
21 CFR 216.23, Bulk drug substances that can be used to compound drug products in accordance with section 503A of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Paragraph (a) names Brilliant Blue G, cantharidin, diphenylcyclopropenone, N-acetyl-D-glucosamine, squaric acid dibutyl ester and thymol iodide. Source note 84 FR 4710, 19 February 2019. Retrieved from the eCFR 29 July 2026, HTTP 200. eCFR, section 216.23. FDA's category 2 and withdrawn-nomination entries for ipamorelin acetate sit on its safety-risk page, content current 22 April 2026.
9
ClinicalTrials.gov. Safety and Efficacy of Ipamorelin for Management of Post-Operative Ileus, phase 2, completed, 117 participants, sponsor Helsinn Therapeutics (U.S.), Inc: NCT00672074. Safety and Efficacy of Ipamorelin Compared to Placebo for the Recovery of Gastrointestinal Function, phase 2, completed, 320 participants, same sponsor: NCT01280344. Records read 29 July 2026, HTTP 200.

The disclaimer

Every page is reviewed by medical professionals before it ships, and written with longtime biohackers who were doing this before it was a trend. Reviewed still does not mean prescribed: nothing here is medical advice.

It is research, trial data, and reported use, with the numbers intact so you can check them. For decisions about your body, see a doctor who can look at your labs.