Sermorelin is the compound whose dose everybody quotes and nobody sources. The number that circulates, 200 to 300 micrograms a night, is repeated by compounding pharmacies, men's clinics and protocol sites. It did not come from a trial. The one labelled dose sermorelin ever had was for children; the adult trials that exist gave several times more; and the largest single nightly dose tested in older adults did not raise IGF-I. This page lays the three sets of figures side by side, with sources and dates. It does not recommend any of them. How brands appear on this site is set out on our disclosure page.
What sermorelin is
Sermorelin is GHRH(1-29)-NH2: the first 29 residues of growth hormone-releasing hormone, amidated. A 1999 review describes it as the shortest synthetic peptide with the full biological activity of the 44-residue parent (Prakash and Goa, BioDrugs). It acts on the pituitary's GHRH receptor, and the pituitary answers with a pulse of growth hormone. That makes it a different drug class from ipamorelin, which works through the ghrelin receptor; the two are compared on our ipamorelin vs sermorelin page. Its longer relative tesamorelin, which has a current FDA label, has its own tesamorelin dosage page.
The regulatory record
Drugs@FDA, read on 2026-09-23, lists two applications, both held by EMD Serono and both Discontinued:
| Application | Product | Strength | Use | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NDA 019863 (approved 1990-12-28) | GEREF injectable | 0.05 mg per ampule | Diagnostic test | Discontinued |
| NDA 020443 (approved 1997-09-26) | GEREF injectable | 0.5 mg per vial | Treatment | Discontinued |
| NDA 020443 | GEREF injectable | 1 mg per vial | Treatment | Discontinued |
Every line carries the same note: a Federal Register determination that the product "was not discontinued or withdrawn for safety or effectiveness reasons". That note matters for one practical reason. It is the finding that allows sermorelin to be compounded now, which is why every adult dose in circulation comes from a pharmacy rather than from a label. The wider status of compounded peptides is on our 503A category 2 page.
The labelled dose: children, at bedtime
The treatment label was pediatric. The review of its clinical use reports "once daily subcutaneous sermorelin 30 microg/kg bodyweight given at bedtime" as effective "in treating some prepubertal children with idiopathic growth hormone deficiency", and the diagnostic dose as a single intravenous 1 microgram per kilogram (Prakash and Goa 1999). The same review notes that 30 micrograms per kilogram of sermorelin raised height velocity less than the same weight-based amount of recombinant growth hormone.
For a sense of scale only: 30 micrograms per kilogram in a 20 kg child is 600 micrograms. The pediatric dose was weight-based; no adult dose was ever labelled.
The adult trials
Three adult trials with doses in their abstracts are indexed in PubMed. All three enrolled older people, all three were small, and none tested sermorelin for the purposes clinics now describe.
| Trial | Who | What was given | For how long | What moved |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corpas et al., JCEM 1992, National Institute on Aging | 10 healthy men, mean age 68 (plus 9 young controls, untreated) | GHRH(1-29) 0.5 mg and 1 mg, each twice daily, subcutaneously, in random order | 14 days per dose | GH and IGF-I rose significantly only at 1 mg twice daily; at that dose the old men's values no longer differed from the young men's |
| Vittone et al., Metabolism 1997, Johns Hopkins | 11 healthy men aged 64 to 76 with low IGF-I | GHRH(1-29) 2 mg once nightly, self-injected | 6 weeks | Nocturnal GH rose; IGF-I, IGFBP-3, body composition and muscle histology did not change; two of six strength measures improved |
| Khorram et al., JCEM 1997, UC San Diego | 10 women and 9 men aged 55 to 71 | [Nle27]GHRH(1-29)-NH2, 10 micrograms per kilogram nightly, after 4 weeks of placebo | 16 weeks | IGF-I rose within 2 weeks and returned toward baseline by week 16; lean mass rose in men only; transient raised lipids was the one adverse effect reported |
Two things in that table are worth stating plainly. The first is that the Khorram compound is a norleucine-substituted analogue, not sermorelin itself. It is close enough that it is often cited as a sermorelin trial, and different enough that it should not be. The second is that Vittone's authors drew their own conclusion from the null IGF-I result: "single nightly doses of GHRH are less effective than multiple daily doses of GHRH in eliciting GH- and/or IGF-I-mediated effects."
What compounders and clinics state
| Source | What it states | Kind of source | Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Empower Pharmacy | "0.2 to 0.3 mg of sermorelin acetate injected subcutaneously once daily at bedtime"; lyophilized vials of 6, 9 and 15 mg | Compounding pharmacy | 2026-09-23 |
| Olympia Pharmaceuticals | "300 mcg (33 units)" once nightly, "sixty to ninety minutes after your last meal", from a 0.9 mg/mL solution; one vial "intended to cover 28 days" | Compounding pharmacy chart | 2026-09-23 |
| Protocol and clinic pages opened for this site on 2026-09-05 | 200 to 300 mcg nightly as the common tier, starting at 100 mcg, with 400 to 500 mcg "in some cases" | Protocol sites and clinic guides, commonly cited | 2026-09-05 |
The comparison nobody prints
Put the adult columns next to each other and the gap is the finding.
| Source | Daily amount (70 kg adult, where weight-based) |
|---|---|
| Clinic convention | 0.2 to 0.3 mg |
| Khorram 1997 (an analogue) | about 0.7 mg |
| Corpas 1992, the dose that worked on its endpoints | 2 mg (1 mg twice) |
| Vittone 1997, the dose that did not raise IGF-I | 2 mg (once) |
At 300 micrograms, the clinic figure is 15 percent of the single nightly dose that failed to move IGF-I in six weeks, and roughly one-seventh of the daily total in the one trial that did move it. None of this makes any amount right or wrong for anyone; it makes the circulating figure a convention rather than a finding, which is what the pharmacies' own wording ("per prescriber direction", "individualized") already concedes. Our guide to reading a dosing claim sets out how to tell the two apart.
Units: where the numbers break
Sermorelin figures appear in milligrams, micrograms, millilitres and syringe units, often on the same page. A unit figure is meaningless without the concentration behind it: 300 micrograms is 33 units of Olympia's 0.9 mg/mL solution, and 9 units of a 10 mg vial mixed with 3 mL. The procedure and the arithmetic for any vial are on our reconstitution page; what the record says about duration of action is on our peptide half-life chart, where sermorelin's figure is minutes. In a Kabi Pharmacia study of 30 healthy men, intravenous GHRH(1-29)-NH2 was "rapidly eliminated" while growth hormone stayed raised for about three hours, and nasal bioavailability was 3 to 5 percent (Wilton et al. 1993).
The registry, counted
A ClinicalTrials.gov search for sermorelin on 2026-09-23 returned 42 records. Most are GHRH-class studies of tesamorelin or of GHRH as a test agent. Three name sermorelin or GEREF in their text, and all three use it the same way: 1 microgram per kilogram intravenously, as a diagnostic stimulation test. One of them, the macimorelin diagnostic study NCT00448747, records that its planned crossover did not happen "due to the unavailability of GHRH (Geref) in the United States." No registered record gives sermorelin as a treatment to anyone.
What the record does not contain
An adult dose-finding study; any trial of sermorelin for body composition, sleep, recovery or ageing in people under sixty; any trial of the nightly 200 to 300 microgram convention; and long-term safety data in healthy adults. What adverse events the pediatric programme and the adult trials did record is set out on our sermorelin side effects page. Sermorelin sits on our peptide dosage chart alongside every other compound this site has sourced. Nothing on this page is a recommendation.
Sources and dates
Read 2026-09-23: Drugs@FDA records for NDA 019863 and NDA 020443 via openFDA; PubMed abstracts for Prakash and Goa 1999 (PMID 18031173), Corpas 1992 (PMID 1379256), Vittone 1997 (PMID 9005976), Khorram 1997 (PMID 9141536) and Wilton 1993 (PMID 8329825); ClinicalTrials.gov v2 search and records NCT00324064, NCT03018886 and NCT00448747; Empower Pharmacy's sermorelin page; Olympia Pharmaceuticals' sermorelin chart. Corrections go to the contact page.