GHRP-2

Definition

GHRP-2 is a synthetic hexapeptide that stimulates growth hormone release by acting at the ghrelin receptor rather than at the growth hormone-releasing hormone receptor. It was developed as a pituitary provocation agent — a way of asking the pituitary how much growth hormone it is able to release — and most of what has been published about it in people was published for that purpose.

It reaches United States buyers today as research-use-only material, marketed for the effects the provocation studies measured. This index tracks it because its regulatory file is the clearest example of a distinction the marketplace collapses: the size of a compound's literature and the strength of its nomination are different things, and the FDA has filed this one on the second.

Evidence

The literature is neither small nor absent. Across six name variants PubMed returns 260 indexed records, of which 160 carry the Humans subject heading, 59 the clinical-trial publication type, and 43 the randomized-controlled-trial type ^[1]. Every one of the 59 titles was retrieved and read. The publication-type filter was proved live in the same run against a control term returning 8,906 records under the clinical-trial type and 6,115 under the randomized type, the invalid tag returned zero for that control term, and a deliberately invalid record identifier errored at the end of the run ^[1].

What the 59 records contain is a diagnostic and physiological literature. The dominant design gives GHRP-2 once, or over a few hours, and measures growth hormone, adrenocorticotropic hormone or cortisol release under varying hormonal conditions; a large share come from a single physiology group working on the regulation of growth hormone pulses. A phase 1 study established pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in children ^[2]; an eight-month study of graded doses in growth-hormone-deficient children is the longest administration record indexed ^[3]; a study in obese adults measured the effect on food intake ^[4]; and a study in adults established the compound as a diagnostic test for growth hormone deficiency ^[5]. One record is a study in pigs ^[1].

The distance between that record and what the compound is sold for is the finding. A provocation study establishes that a peptide releases growth hormone; it does not establish that releasing growth hormone in a person who is not deficient produces a clinical outcome, and none of the 59 records was designed to answer that question. The eight-month record is a dose-ranging study in deficient children, which is a different population from the one buying the material.

Lawful access

There is no lawful United States supply route. Drugs@FDA holds no approved product with GHRP-2 or pralmorelin as an active ingredient; the same query form in the same session returned one application for bremelanotide and fourteen for liraglutide, and returned nothing for a deliberately invented ingredient name ^[6].

On the section 503A bulks list FDA published May 14, 2026, GHRP-2 appears in Category 3 — the file for substances nominated without adequate support to evaluate — and in neither of the other two categories ^[7]. Category 3 is the least understood position on that document. It is not a safety finding, which is Category 2; it is not a permission to compound while review continues, which is Category 1. It records that the nomination submitted for the substance did not contain enough to review, and it confers nothing.

Under the separate section 503B policy governing outsourcing facilities, GHRP-2 for injectable and nasal routes of administration is in Category 2, added September 29, 2023. FDA states there that compounded drugs containing it may pose a risk for immunogenicity from aggregation and peptide-related impurities, that the substance contains an unnatural amino acid which adds to the complexity of peptide characterization, and that the agency is aware of reports of serious adverse events in patients who received GHRP-2 — increased insulin requirement, death of critically ill study subjects, infection and pancreatitis — with causality not established ^[8]. Neither list gives a pharmacy a route, and the two together are the whole federal position.

The substance was not among the seven peptides the advisory committee reviewed in July 2026, so nothing that happened at that meeting changed its file ^[7]. What is sold is therefore research-use-only material, and the labeling posture is the subject rather than an aside.

Related molecules

GHRP-2 belongs to the GH secretagogues, the index's most legally scattered class: tesamorelin is approved, sermorelin is lawfully compounded, ipamorelin and CJC-1295 had their nominations withdrawn, and this substance and GHRP-6 sit in a third file again. The nomination tracker prints all six dispositions side by side, and the human trial record prints this molecule's fifty-nine trial-type records next to molecules with none — which is the clearest available demonstration that a trial count does not decide a legal question.

Elsewhere in this index