AOD-9604 common uses, half-life, side effects and more

AOD-9604 is a 16 amino acid fragment of human growth hormone with a tyrosine added to its front end. Its developer built it to keep growth hormone's fat-burning action and drop everything else. People inject it under the skin for fat loss and usually dose in the morning before eating. The obesity program that created it ran six human trials and shut down in 2007 after the largest one failed to beat placebo. No medicine containing it has been approved anywhere. Sellers, telehealth services, and med spas market it for weight loss regardless.

• Fat loss and body recomposition
• Stubborn abdominal fat as a targeted goal
• Muscle retention while cutting calories
• Stacked with GLP-1 drugs or growth hormone secretagogues
• Historical investigational use for obesity

Once daily before the first meal

Injected use runs 250 to 500 mcg under the skin once daily and is taken in the morning before eating. Cycles of 8 to 16 weeks are common. Those numbers match the 0.25, 0.5, and 1 mg arms of the obesity trial that failed. That trial used capsules rather than injections. No human has ever received this compound under the skin in a study. The only injected doses ever tested ran intravenously at several milligrams per dose. Oral capsules and troches sell at 250 mcg to 1 mg and see little use.

• Morning dosing before food is the near-universal convention
• Most sellers pair it with other peptides so effects cannot be traced to this one
• A 5 mg vial with 2 mL of bacteriostatic water gives 250 mcg per 10 units
• Cycling schedules have no trial basis and the trials themselves ran continuously

No human pharmacokinetic study of AOD-9604 exists for any route. Figures in circulation come from pig blood, from rat plasma in a test tube, or from growth hormone itself.

• Headache as the most commonly reported event across trials
• Diarrhea, flatulence, and nausea
• Mild euphoria reported by 5 of 23 people on the intravenous route and by nobody on placebo
• Increased appetite
• Fatigue and dizziness
• Severe chest tightness in one person judged possibly drug related

AOD-9604 copies the tail end of the growth hormone molecule. It lacks the second receptor binding site that growth hormone needs to switch its receptor on. Cell studies confirm it neither binds nor activates that receptor. Rodent work shows it lowers fat production, raises fat breakdown, and reduces body weight in obese animals. One study links the sustained fat effect to beta-3 adrenergic signaling. The acute effect persisted in animals bred without those receptors. Regulators reviewing the whole file concluded the molecular target and the mechanism remain unknown. Claims that it binds beta-3 receptors directly are false. Human trials measured a brief rise in circulating fatty acids and never produced weight loss.

Six human trials ran between 1999 and 2007 under the developer's funding with its staff or consultants as authors. Four used capsules and two used intravenous infusion. The 24 week trial in 502 people found no arm that beat placebo and development stopped in 2007. Neither efficacy trial was ever published in a journal. The 12 week result exists only as a conference abstract and the 24 week result only in a stock exchange filing. Oral absorption is under 1 percent by the developer's own estimate. One later study found no drug at all in patients' blood. The long safety record therefore describes people who barely absorbed the drug. Nobody has studied the injected route in humans.

• Nobody has studied this compound injected under the skin in a human trial
• Injecting it likely delivers far more drug into the blood than the trials did because capsules were barely absorbed
• Five cancers occurred in people taking the drug during the 12 week trial and regulators would not rule out a link
• Regulators found genotoxicity signals that the developer had dismissed
• Prohibited in sport at all times as a growth hormone fragment
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding safety is unstudied