Tesamorelin (Egrifta, TH9507)

Tesamorelin: What The Studies Actually Say

A real FDA-approved drug for one narrow use: belly fat in adults with HIV. Those trials are solid. Almost everything else you hear about it rests on small studies, or none.

Updated 22 September 2026

Before you read this

This page explains what published studies found. That is all it is. It is not medical advice, and it is not instructions for using anything. Nothing here is meant to find, treat, cure or stop any illness. The compounds discussed on this site, retatrutide included, are not approved by the FDA for use in people. Research compounds are sold for laboratory use only — not for use in humans or animals. A study tells you what happened to the people in it. It does not tell you what would happen to you. What you do with what you read here is your responsibility, so talk to a doctor first. This page is published by Ascend Vials, which sells research compounds.

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Tesamorelin is a real medicine. The FDA approved it in 2010 — for one narrow thing.

Here is what the studies found about that thing, and about everything else it gets claimed for. Every claim has a link. Read them yourself.

The 30-second version

It is an FDA-approved drug, Egrifta, for one use only: extra belly fat in adults with HIV.
In two big trials, deep belly fat shrank about 15% more than on placebo in 26 weeks.
Weight barely moved. The label says it is not a weight-loss drug.
When people stopped, the fat came back within about six months.
It pushes up a hormone called IGF-1 — far above normal in over a third of people. Nobody knows what years of that does.
Europe never approved it. The memory and muscle claims rest on small or unconfirmed studies. Anti-aging was never tested.
Nothing sold online has been shown to match what the trials used. No study has checked.

The numbers, from the real studies

Tesamorelin was tested in two big trials of adults with HIV who were on HIV medicine and had built up extra belly fat. About 1 in 3 got a fake shot so the results could be compared. FDA label

The first trial had 412 people. After 26 weeks, the fat packed deep around the organs — visceral fat, measured on a CT scan — shrank 15.2% on the drug. On the fake shot it grew 5.0%. New England Journal of Medicine, 2007 The second trial had 404 people. Deep belly fat shrank 10.9%, against 0.6% on the fake shot. JAIDS, 2010

Deep belly fat change compared with placebo, after 26 weeks

Trial 1−20%

Trial 2−12%

Both−15.4%

The trial bars use the FDA label's figures, which count the same people a little differently from the papers. "Both" pools the two trials: 806 people. FDA label · JCEM, 2010

What the headline leaves out:

Weight barely moved: in the first trial, −0.4 kg on the drug and 0.0 kg on placebo. Trunk fat fell about 1 kg while lean mass — everything that is not fat — rose about 1.3 kg. The label calls the drug "weight neutral." FDA label
Only the deep fat changed. Fat just under the skin, and in the arms and legs, did not change significantly. JCEM, 2010 · JAIDS, 2010
The waist shrank 1 to 2 cm more than on placebo. FDA label

Stop, and the fat comes back

After 26 weeks, some people on the drug were switched to the fake shot. Over the next 26 weeks their deep belly fat grew back 22% in the first trial and 16% in the second. People who stayed on the drug held at 0% and −5%. FDA label

So in these trials, the result lasted only as long as the shots did. And no trial has compared it with placebo for longer than a year.

What it has been tested for

Here is what has actually been tested in people.

	Biggest study in people	What it found	Approved for it?
Belly fat in HIV	2 trials, about 400 people each	Deep belly fat down about 15% vs placebo	Yes, US, 2010
Fatty liver in HIV	61 people, 1 year	Liver fat down 37% more than placebo	No
Belly fat in obesity	60 people, 1 year	Deep belly fat down vs placebo	No
Memory	152 older adults, 20 weeks	Better on some tests; not confirmed since	No
Muscle	Scans of people it already worked for	More muscle area; strength never measured	No
Anti-aging	None	Never tested	No

Read the whole table. The first row stands on two big trials. Every row under it rests on one small study, or less.

Fatty liver: in 61 adults with HIV, a year on the drug cut liver fat 37% more than placebo did, and 35% reached a normal liver-fat level, against 4% on placebo. Lancet HIV, 2019 Scarring that was already there did not improve. Full paper Outside HIV there are only registry results from 51 people, not checked by a journal. Trial record

Obesity: one trial of 60 adults with belly obesity and low growth hormone. After a year, deep belly fat was down 35 cm² more than on placebo. JCEM, 2012

Memory: a 2012 trial of 152 adults aged 55 to 87 found slightly better scores on thinking tests, mostly planning-type skills. Memory itself showed only a trend. Archives of Neurology, 2012 Two later studies — 73 people with HIV, and a 22-person pilot — found no significant benefit. J Infect Dis, 2025 · eNeurologicalSci, 2026

Muscle: a re-check of trial scans found more muscle area. But it only counted people whose belly fat had already dropped, so it overstates the effect. Strength was never measured. J Frailty Aging, 2019

The compounds used in this study can be found here: →ascendvials.com

What it is

Tesamorelin is a lab-made copy of GHRH — growth hormone-releasing hormone, a natural signal in the body. It is the full 44-building-block human version, plus a short fatty chain at one end. FDA label In lab and animal tests, that chain made it harder for an enzyme in the blood to break down. Source

It does not contain growth hormone. It tells the pituitary, the gland that makes growth hormone, to release more of its own. That raises IGF-1, a hormone the body makes when growth hormone goes up. FDA label In 13 healthy men, two weeks of daily shots pushed IGF-1 way up, with no significant change in blood sugar measures. JCEM, 2011

Half of it leaves the blood in about 11 minutes. Even so, in the trials one shot a day was enough to shrink deep belly fat. FDA label

What to expect

These side effects showed up more often than on placebo in the first 26 weeks of the two big trials. FDA label

	Placebo	Tesamorelin
Reaction where the shot went in	6%	17%
Joint pain	11%	13%
Muscle pain	2%	6%
Swelling in arms or legs	2%	6%
Tingling	2%	5%
Numbness	2%	4%
Rash	2%	4%
Throwing up	0%	3%

The label says the swelling, joint pain and carpal tunnel (a pinched nerve in the wrist) come from fluid build-up, and pass or clear up when the drug stops. In the FDA's public side-effect reports, carpal tunnel shows up at about 20 times the odds of other drugs — a warning sign, not a measured rate. Source

A 2026 review of four trials found more people quit on the drug than on placebo, but the gap was not big enough to be sure. Review, 2026

Four bigger things:

IGF-1 goes very high. By week 26, 36% of people on the drug were far above the normal range. The label says the effects of that are unknown and tells doctors to consider stopping. FDA label Europe's regulators called it a "major safety concern," because of possible links to cancer and diabetic eye disease. EMA, 2012

Blood sugar. By week 26, 5% on the drug reached the diabetes range on a long-term blood sugar test, against 1% on placebo. FDA label In the liver trial, two people had to stop because their blood sugar got worse. Full paper

Antibodies. Half of people made antibodies against the drug. In about 60% of them, the antibodies also reacted with the body's own GHRH. What that means over years is unknown. FDA label

Cancer. The label calls growth hormone "a known growth factor." Tesamorelin is ruled out for people with active cancer, and the lifetime animal studies that check for cancer were never done. FDA label

The label also rules it out in pregnancy and for people with pituitary damage. In children it may cause too much growth. FDA label

The compounds used in this study can be found here: →ascendvials.com

Approved in the US, for one use

United States: approved on November 10, 2010, as Egrifta. The newest version, Egrifta WR, followed in March 2025. The approval covers one use: extra belly fat in adults with HIV who have lipodystrophy. Long-term heart safety has not been established. Approval letter · FDA label
Europe: never approved. The application was withdrawn in 2012, when regulators' early view was that it could not be approved. The fat loss was not shown to improve health, the trial patients did not match European patients, and there was no long-term safety data. It is still listed as withdrawn. EMA, 2012 · EMA data, 2026
Canada: approved in 2014, now cancelled. Health Canada lists both products as cancelled, in 2022 and 2023. 2014 announcement · Record 1 · Record 2
Sport: banned at all times on the 2026 anti-doping list. WADA, 2026

It is not approved anywhere for obesity, anti-aging, memory, bodybuilding or fatty liver.

What is still unknown

Approval did not close these questions:

Heart attacks, strokes and deaths. No trial has reported whether it changes any of them. FDA label
Cancer and eye disease over years. At approval, the FDA required a 10-year safety study and an eye-disease trial that would also track heart problems. Both were stopped in 2018 with no results posted. Approval letter · Study record · Trial record
People outside the trials. The big trials took only ages 18 to 65, and mostly left out people with diabetes or past cancer. FDA label
Strength. No trial has shown it. A trial with exercise was still recruiting in May 2026. Trial record

What is in the bottle is not what was studied

One more thing.

Every result on this page came from tesamorelin made for clinical trials and given under a doctor's care. The approved version is Egrifta, made by Theratechnologies.

No study has ever shown that a product sold online as "tesamorelin" is the same thing. Not the same purity. Not the same strength. Not proof it is sterile. Not even proof it is the same molecule. There are no human data on it at all.

The real drug does exist: in the US it is a prescription medicine, for one use.

So take every number on this page for what it is. It describes the drug the trials used, in the people they studied. It describes nothing else.

The compounds used in this study can be found here: →ascendvials.com

How to check a number yourself

You are going to see more numbers about this drug. In a reel. In a comment. On somebody's store page.

Here is how to tell a real one from a marketing one. Five questions. About ten seconds each.

1. Is there a link to a study?

A real number comes from a paper you can open. No link means it is a claim, not a result. Search the drug name on pubmed.gov yourself. With tesamorelin you will find real trials — so also check what each one measured.

2. How big was it, and how long did it run?

Small studies swing. The belly-fat result rests on two trials of about 400 people each. The memory claim rests on one trial of 152 people for 20 weeks. Same kind of headline. Very different weight behind it.

3. Was there a group that got nothing?

The fake shot is the whole point. In the first big trial, deep belly fat grew 5% on the fake shot. Without that group, nobody can tell how much of the change was the drug. The 2025 memory trial in HIV had no fake-shot group, and its own authors said so.

4. Who was in it?

A number is only true for the people who were studied. The strong tesamorelin numbers come from adults with HIV, aged 18 to 65 — and 86% of the first trial were men. No big trial has been run in healthy people.

5. What happened when they stopped?

Most headlines only cover the time people were taking something. Here the trials checked what came after: the deep belly fat came back within about six months.

Now run those five on this page

Every number above links to the paper it came from. The study sizes and who was studied are in the table. The fake-shot numbers are in the chart and the side-effect table. What happened after people stopped has its own section.

The claims made for it outside HIV belly fat — muscle, memory, anti-aging — have no big trial behind them.

That is the whole difference: a number you can check, and a number you are asked to believe.

This page has a date on it, near the top. When new studies publish, this page changes.

Ascend Vials publishes this guide and sells research compounds. Now you know how to check us: →ascendvials.com

Read the studies yourself

Everything above describes what clinical trials gave to enrolled patients under a doctor's care. This is not advice, a plan, or instructions. In the US, tesamorelin is approved only as the prescription medicine Egrifta, for one use. Research compounds are not for human or animal use.