Methodology: how the peptide register is researched and written

The peptide register records the status of a substance. It does not tell anyone what to take, how much, or in what combination. Almost everything else on this page follows from that one commitment, including the parts that will look like omissions.

All content is for general information only, and is not medical advice, a dosing or usage recommendation, or a claim of efficacy. Many of the substances described are not approved as medicines or are prescription-only. Whether possession and use are lawful depends on the law of your country of residence and is your own responsibility.

What the register is, and what it is not

The register answers a narrow set of questions about each substance: what it is, where it stands with regulators in each market, what has been shown in published work, what has failed or remains unstudied, and how anti-doping bodies classify it. Each answer is dated, versioned and referenced.

It is not an advice site. There are no protocols, no cycles, no stacking guidance and no instructions on handling, reconstitution or injection. No vendor is named, no supplier is linked, and no page indicates where a substance might be obtained. Nothing is rated, ranked or recommended.

The distinction between a record and a recommendation is not cosmetic. In most jurisdictions, the moment a page moves from describing a substance to encouraging its use, it stops being editorial content and becomes advertising for a medicine, which for prescription-only and unapproved substances is prohibited. The register stays on the record side of that line, which is also the side that produces more useful reference pages. It is separate from the myPeptides app, a tracking tool people bring their own data to, and no page in it exists to sell anything.

What a monograph contains

Every substance page follows the same fourteen sections in the same order, in every language, so that two pages can be compared section by section.

A summary opens the page with the five facts that matter most. Identity and nomenclature covers the international non-proprietary name, development codes, synonyms and structural class, with a table of identifiers such as CAS, PubChem CID, UNII, InChIKey, DrugBank, ChEMBL and Wikidata. Class and mechanism describes receptors and targets, with hypotheses written as hypotheses. Regulatory status by market tabulates markets, statuses, dates and sources. Development history and clinical programme lays out the timeline and the trial table, keyed to registry numbers. Evidence by outcome treats each studied outcome with a grade attached. Safety data reported in studies tabulates adverse events with frequencies and sources, plus any label warnings and the gaps.

Then either doses used in published studies or, where doses are withheld, a short section explaining why. Anti-doping status quotes the current prohibited list. Chemistry, stability and storage covers formula, mass and published stability findings. Common confusions and misinformation pairs a circulating claim with what the sources actually say. Frequently asked questions, sources and cite this page and version history close the page.

Above the body sits a status box that is not written by hand. It renders from a versioned dataset holding the approval status per market, the development stage, the strongest evidence grade, the anti-doping classification, a last-verified date and a version number. Because every language edition reads from that same record, the status shown is identical everywhere, and a translation cannot drift from the facts. The record is also available as a JSON export at the page's address with a .json suffix. Each page carries a suggested citation with its version number and an access date, because a page that changes over time should be cited by version.

Sources and verification

Sources are ranked, and the ranking decides which one wins when two disagree.

Regulatory documents come first: approval decisions, assessment reports and the current product label or summary of product characteristics, which are the authoritative statement of what a regulator concluded. Next come trial registries, chiefly ClinicalTrials.gov and the EU register, which establish that a study exists, its design, its size, its endpoints and its status, independently of whether anyone liked the result. Third are peer-reviewed primary publications, meaning the trial reports and original experiments themselves rather than descriptions of them. Fourth are guidelines and standing lists, including the World Anti-Doping Agency prohibited list and national scheduling instruments. Secondary literature such as reviews is used last, mainly to locate primary work, and is never cited for a number the primary paper states directly.

Press releases and conference abstracts are used only where nothing better exists, and are labelled as what they are: a dated claim by an interested party, not a published result. A sponsor's topline announcement is recorded with its date and upgraded once the paper appears.

Vendor pages, shop listings, marketing material, forum threads, social posts and video transcripts are never sources for anything, at any grade, including for chemistry. They are occasionally quoted in the misinformation section as examples of a circulating claim, and then only to say what the primary literature shows. Every figure carries a numbered reference, and a number that could not be traced to a primary source is not published.

Evidence grading

Each outcome carries one grade describing the strongest study design that has addressed it. The grade is about design, not about whether the result was favourable.

Two rules apply throughout. Effect sizes are reported as published, with the population, the number of participants, the design and the comparator, because an effect size without its denominator is not information. And endpoints that were missed are named as plainly as endpoints that were met: a trial that failed its primary outcome appears with that failure stated, not quietly reduced to whichever secondary endpoint looked better.

Regulatory status and the three legal classes

Every substance in the register falls into one of three classes, and the class governs what its page may contain.

A prescription medicine has been approved by at least one major regulator and is dispensed on prescription. Its page records the approval, the indications as granted, the label's warnings and the published trial results, and carries no dosing information.

An investigational compound is in clinical development but not approved anywhere. Its page records the development stage, the registered trials, published results where they exist and the absence of any authorisation. It carries no dosing information either.

A research chemical is neither approved nor in a recognised clinical programme, and is nonetheless widely discussed. Its page records what preclinical and, rarely, clinical work exists, the honest state of the human evidence, and the doses used in the published studies, presented as a scientific finding rather than as guidance.

These classes are jurisdictional, not universal, and the register says so per market. Australia is the clearest illustration. Several substances treated elsewhere as unregulated research chemicals are listed there in Schedule 4 of the Poisons Standard, meaning prescription-only, which changes both their legal position and what may lawfully be published about them for a general audience. Because the register is published globally rather than segmented by country, it applies the stricter reading. Each row of the regulatory table carries its own status date, so a page whose Australian entry differs from its United States entry is showing a real divergence. Background on these classifications sits on are peptides legal and FDA-approved peptides.

Why some pages list no doses, and how study doses are handled

Prescription medicines and investigational compounds carry no doses on their pages, including doses that appear in an approved label.

For an approved medicine, the dosing scheme is part of a prescribing decision made by a clinician for a specific patient, and the authoritative version is the label itself, which regulators require to be supplied with the product. For an investigational compound, the doses exist only inside a trial protocol, under monitoring, in a selected population. Reproducing either as public reference content would move the page from recording a status to instructing a general audience in the use of a prescription-only or unapproved product, which is precisely the boundary that medicines advertising law draws. Those pages state the omission in two or three sentences and point to the label or the registry entry instead.

Research chemicals are handled differently, because withholding the study doses would misrepresent the literature rather than protect anyone. Their pages carry a table headed "doses used in published studies", introduced by a fixed sentence: these are the doses reported in the cited studies, listed for scientific reference, and they are not a recommendation and do not translate to human use. Every row names the study, the model, the dose, the route, the duration and the source, so that a rat experiment reads as a rat experiment.

What those tables never do is bridge to human use. There is no conversion of animal doses to human equivalents, no suggested range, no frequency, and no framing in terms of an injection or a course. Where the underlying work is entirely preclinical, the section says so, and so does the evidence grade above it.

Anti-doping

The World Anti-Doping Agency publishes a prohibited list once a year, effective from the first of January, and each page cites the current edition by year.

The category that catches most peptides is S0, non-approved substances, covering any pharmacological substance not addressed by another section and with no current approval by any governmental regulatory health authority for human therapeutic use. It is deliberately open-ended: a compound does not need to be named anywhere to be prohibited under it. Substances named explicitly, typically under the peptide hormones and growth factors sections, are recorded with the section reference and quoted wording.

Separately, the agency runs a monitoring programme for substances it is watching but has not prohibited, and inclusion there is recorded as monitoring rather than as a ban. Pages state the consequence for athletes neutrally: what is prohibited, in or out of competition, and where the authoritative text sits. Substances covered are collected on peptides banned in sport.

Versioning, review cycle and corrections

Every page has a version number and a changelog recording what changed and when, so a page cited six months ago can be distinguished from the page today. The status box carries a last-verified date, which is the date a person last checked the page's facts against their sources, not the date the file was last touched.

Pages are re-reviewed at least every six months, and sooner when something moves: a regulatory decision, a scheduling change, a pivotal trial reading out, a safety communication, or a new edition of the prohibited list. A status change is a fact in its own right and appears in the changelog with its date, so a substance's regulatory history stays legible rather than being overwritten.

Corrections are welcome and are handled through the contact page. The most useful form is the sentence you think is wrong plus the primary source you think is right. Corrections of fact are made promptly and recorded in the changelog rather than applied silently.

Editorial independence

myPeptides sells no substances and has no commercial relationship with anyone who does. There are no affiliate links, no sponsored articles, no paid placements and no products advertised in the register. No supplier or vendor sees a page before publication.

myPeptides is an organisation app: people use it to track what they are already doing, with their own data. The register is not marketing for it, which is why substance pages do not promote app features and the app does not link to shops.

On how the pages are produced: research and drafting are assisted by AI tooling; every published fact is checked against its primary source by the editorial team before release. Grading an outcome, classifying a regulatory status and deciding what a page may and may not contain are editorial judgements made by people, against the rules set out above.

Frequently asked questions

Is the peptide register medical advice?

No. It is a status register. Each page records what a substance is, where it stands with regulators, what has been published and what the anti-doping rules say, with a reference for every factual claim. It contains no protocols, no usage instructions and no recommendation that anyone take anything. Health questions belong with a licensed physician or pharmacist.

Why do some pages have no doses at all?

Because the substance is a prescription medicine or an investigational compound. The dosing information that exists is part of an approved label or a trial protocol, and reproducing it as public consumer-facing content would turn a status record into promotion of a prescription-only or unapproved product. Those pages explain the omission and point to the label or the registry entry instead.

Where do the figures on the pages come from?

From primary sources, ranked in a fixed order: approval documents and product labels first, then trial registry entries such as ClinicalTrials.gov, then peer-reviewed primary publications, then guidelines and the World Anti-Doping Agency list, and only then reviews. Every number carries a reference. Vendor pages, shops and forum posts are never used as sources.

How often are the pages updated?

Each page is re-reviewed at least every six months, and immediately when a regulatory status changes, a pivotal trial reads out or an anti-doping listing is revised. The status box shows a last-verified date and a version number, and every page ends with a changelog recording what changed and when.

Does myPeptides sell peptides or earn commission on them?

No. There are no products for sale, no vendor links, no affiliate links and no sponsored content anywhere in the register. myPeptides is an organisation app, and the register is editorial work alongside it, not advertising for it.

Is the register written by AI?

Research and drafting are assisted by AI tooling; every published fact is checked against its primary source by the editorial team before release. Grading, regulatory classification and the decision about what a page may and may not contain are editorial judgements, made by people, against the rules described on this page.