Peptifact

Noopept Dosage: 106 Papers, Zero Registered Trials, and One Dose Figure — 20 mg a Day, From an Open Study With No Randomisation

The most widely sold peptide nootropic has a literature and no trial registry presence at all. A census run on 18 September 2026 found 106 PubMed records, 28 human-tagged, none tagged a randomised controlled trial, and three tagged clinical trials — all three in Russian.

Robert F · Edited by Caroline S · Published 2026-09-18

Illustration: A clear glass vial with lyophilized powder on a cool grey slate surface.
Illustration

Noopept is among the most widely sold compounds marketed as a peptide nootropic. Its dose figure circulates freely and is usually given without a source.

There is a source. There is exactly one, it is a translated abstract of an unblinded study, and the useful work on this page is establishing that and then saying what surrounds it.

The census

Run on 18 September 2026, and reproducible by anyone:

Query Where Records
noopept OR omberacetam ClinicalTrials.gov 0
noopept (all fields) PubMed 106
GVS-111 (development code) PubMed 97
omberacetam PubMed 91
N-phenylacetyl-L-prolylglycine PubMed 17
noopept AND Humans[MeSH] PubMed 28
noopept AND Randomized Controlled Trial[pt] PubMed 0
noopept AND Clinical Trial[pt] PubMed 3
noopept FDA Drug Master File list 0

The three clinical-trial-tagged papers are all Russian-language: PMID 22500312 (2011) and PMID 19008801 (2008), both in Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S.S. Korsakova, and PMID 18318195 (2007) in Eksperimental'naia i Klinicheskaia Farmakologiia.

The figure, and where it comes from

The one dose statement in that set is in the 2011 stroke paper, and its abstract puts it in a single sentence:

"noopept, used in dose 20 mg daily during 2 months, improves cognitive functions in stroke patients and has a high level of safety"

That is the figure. 20 mg daily, two months, PMID 22500312, 2011.

What the study was

The same abstract describes the design, and the description is what qualifies the figure:

  • "an open prospective study" — unblinded. Patients and investigators knew who was being treated.
  • 60 patients with stroke, followed over 12 months.
  • Cognitive function assessed by neuropsychological tests before and after treatment.
  • Significant improvement on MMSE and association tasks reported after 2 months against controls.
  • Global assessment of efficacy: "mild improvement" in the treated group, no change in controls.

Two things are absent and both matter. The abstract does not state that participants were randomised, and PubMed's index carries no Randomized Controlled Trial tag on the paper. It reports controls without describing in the abstract how they were assigned.

Cognitive testing is among the outcomes most sensitive to expectation — from the patient, and from the assessor scoring the test. An unblinded design is the one least able to separate the drug's effect from the effect of being treated and repeatedly assessed. That does not make the result wrong. It makes it the weakest design that still produces a publishable number, and it is the sole human dose figure this compound has.

The second clinical-trial-tagged paper (PMID 19008801, 2008) adds an EEG signal — increased alpha and beta power, reduced delta, in post-traumatic and vascular cognitive disturbance — and states no dose in its abstract. A change in an EEG rhythm is evidence that something pharmacological is happening. It is not a cognitive outcome, and the paper does not present it as one.

Why zero registered trials is the more important number

Trial registration exists to fix what a study intends to measure before it measures it. Without a registered protocol there is no pre-specified endpoint, no public record of what was planned, and no way to know how many studies were started against how many were published.

Noopept has no record in ClinicalTrials.gov under any of its names. Part of that is historical: its clinical development happened in a Russian research system that predates and sits outside the registration regime, so the absence is not evidence of anything being hidden. The consequence is nonetheless unavoidable — nothing about this compound's human use can be checked against a registered protocol, and the 20 mg figure cannot be traced back to a plan.

This catalogue has met the shape before, and twice with compounds from the same research tradition. Semax and Selank were both developed in the same Moscow institutional world, and both carry human literature that is real, Russian and awkward to convert into a usable figure — Semax because its published numbers are solution concentrations rather than masses, Selank because its randomised evidence sits in two papers in one journal. Noopept is the same tradition at its extreme: the literature is the largest of the three and the registry presence is nil.

What it is, chemically

N-phenylacetyl-L-prolylglycine ethyl ester. PubChem CID 180496, C17H22N2O4, 318.4 g/mol.

Two residues — proline and glycine — with a phenylacetyl group on one terminus and an ethyl ester on the other. Both modifications are load-bearing: they are what let it survive the gut and work as a swallowed capsule, which an ordinary peptide does not.

So it is a peptide-derived small molecule, not a peptide drug, and it is the smallest thing this market sells under the peptide heading. Peptide Lexicon's noopept entry covers the structure and the Moscow design history, which worked backwards from piracetam to the dipeptide fragments implicit in it.

What is not in the record

No approval in the United States or the European Union. No registered US drug-substance filing — zero Drug Master Files of any type, which for a compound with no US application pending is the expected result rather than a finding, on the reasoning set out on the sources page. No dose-ranging study establishing why 20 mg. No second figure from an independent group to compare it against.

The honest summary is short. One number exists, from one unblinded study of sixty stroke patients, published in Russian in 2011, and it is 20 mg a day for two months. Everything else in circulation is that figure repeated, or an inference from rodent work.

Reported here with its source and its date, as this catalogue reports every figure. None of it is offered as a figure to use, and decisions about administering anything to a person belong with a clinician.

Frequently asked questions

What is the dose of noopept in the published record?

One figure, from one study: 20 mg daily for two months. It comes from a 2011 Russian-language paper in Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S.S. Korsakova (PMID 22500312), whose abstract states that 'noopept, used in dose 20 mg daily during 2 months, improves cognitive functions in stroke patients and has a high level of safety'. That is the whole of the human dose record that a search of the indexed literature surfaces. It is a real figure with a real source and a date, and everything that matters about how much weight it carries is in the study design rather than in the number.

What was the design of the study that figure comes from?

The abstract describes it as an open prospective study of 60 patients with stroke, treated over 12 months, with cognitive function assessed by neuropsychological tests before and after treatment. Open means unblinded — the patients and the investigators knew who was receiving what. The abstract does not state that participants were randomised, and the paper carries no Randomized Controlled Trial tag in PubMed's index. It reports a comparison against controls but does not describe in the abstract how those controls were assigned. On an outcome as susceptible to expectation as cognitive testing, an unblinded comparison is the design least able to separate a drug effect from the effect of being treated and assessed.

Are there registered clinical trials of noopept?

None. A ClinicalTrials.gov search for 'noopept OR omberacetam' on 18 September 2026 returns zero records. This is a stronger absence than it may appear, because trial registration is the mechanism that fixes what a study intended to measure before it measures it. Without it, there is no public record of a protocol, no pre-specified endpoint and no way to know how many studies were begun against how many were published. The Russian literature predates and sits outside that system, so the absence is partly historical rather than evidence of concealment — but the consequence is the same: nothing about this compound's human use can be checked against a registered protocol.

Does the size of the literature mean the compound is well studied?

It means it has been written about, which is a different thing, and the census separates the two. 106 PubMed records for noopept, 97 for its development code GVS-111 and 91 for omberacetam — with heavy overlap between them — describe a genuine body of pharmacology. But only 28 of the 106 carry the Humans tag, none is tagged a randomised controlled trial, and three are tagged clinical trials. The large majority is animal and cell work. The same shape appears elsewhere in this catalogue: a substantial preclinical literature and a human dose record resting on one or two unblinded studies is a common pattern, and it is not what 'well studied' usually implies to a reader.

Why is the human literature entirely in Russian?

Because the compound is a Russian pharmaceutical. It was designed at the Zakusov Research Institute of Pharmacology in Moscow, and its clinical development happened inside a research and publishing system largely separate from the English-language one. All three clinical-trial-tagged papers in the census are Russian-language, two of them in the same neurology and psychiatry journal. This is a documented pattern rather than a peculiarity of this compound — Semax and Selank, from the same institutional world, have records shaped the same way — and it has a practical consequence: the studies are indexed in PubMed and therefore countable, but their full texts and their methods sections are not readable by most of the audience relying on figures derived from them.

Is noopept a peptide?

Not in the sense the rest of this catalogue uses, and the qualification is more than pedantic. It is N-phenylacetyl-L-prolylglycine ethyl ester — a two-residue dipeptide of proline and glycine with a phenylacetyl group on one end and an ethyl ester on the other, at 318.4 g/mol. Both of those modifications are the point: they are what make it survive the gut and work as a swallowed capsule, which no ordinary peptide does. So it is a peptide-derived small molecule rather than a peptide drug. Peptide Lexicon's entry on the compound covers its structure and design history in detail.

Is there a registered manufacturer of noopept?

Not in the US system. FDA's published Drug Master File list contains no records matching noopept, of any type or status. The caveat that applies to every such zero applies here — DMFs are voluntary, are neither approved nor disapproved, and mainly exist to support generic applications, so a zero means no registered US drug-substance filing rather than no manufacturer. The reasoning is set out on the sources page. For a compound with no US approval and no US application pending, the absence of a filing is the expected result rather than an anomaly.

What does the second Russian trial add?

An electrophysiological signal and no dose. PMID 19008801, from 2008, reports EEG changes in patients with cognitive disturbance of post-traumatic and vascular origin: increased alpha and beta rhythm power and reduced delta power, with the alpha change concentrated in the 6.7-10.2 Hz band and the beta change stronger frontally. Its abstract states no dose figure. It is worth reading for what it is — evidence that the compound does something measurable to brain electrical activity — and worth not reading as more than that, since a change in an EEG rhythm is not a cognitive outcome and the paper does not claim it is.