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 shut down in 2007 after its largest trial failed to beat placebo and later trials for pain did no better. 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 tablets rather than injections. No published or registered trial has injected this compound under the skin. Three trials gave it by vein as one-off infusions. The doses ran from about 2 to 35 mg in the early work and about 55 to 145 mg in 2022. 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

Community sources put the half-life of AOD-9604 at about 30 minutes after an injection under the skin. Nobody has measured that route but a dose into a vein clears much faster. It had a half-life of about 3 minutes in pigs and was gone too quickly to measure in a human trial. Each dose clears from the blood within a few hours either way.

• Headache as the most commonly reported event across trials
• Diarrhea, flatulence, and nausea
• Mild or moderate 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.

The developer funded six trials from 2001 to 2006 and its staff or consultants wrote them up. A 12 week trial reported faster weight loss on 1 mg than on placebo but the larger 24 week trial in 502 people found no significant difference. Neither result reached a journal. A later company ran three more trials from 2019 to 2023 for nerve pain and migraine and none beat placebo. No published trial injected it under the skin so the long safety record comes from oral dosing and one-off infusions. How much of an oral dose even reaches the blood is unclear because the only estimate is a later sponsor's figure of under 1 percent that came with no data.

• No published or registered human trial has injected this compound under the skin
• The long safety record comes from oral dosing and one-off infusions by vein so it does not describe a daily injection under the skin
• Four cancers and one benign lump occurred in people taking the drug during the 12 week trial and regulators called the information insufficient to 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