"Sermorelin for women" is searched about 1,600 times a month in the US, with "sermorelin for menopause" and "sermorelin benefits for females" close behind. The question underneath is reasonable: if the drug is sold to both sexes, did anyone measure what it does in women?
A few studies did. This page lists every one found, what each measured in women, and where the women's results differed from the men's. It does not restate the GEREF label and the clinic dose listings or the harm record on our sermorelin side effects page. Nothing here is a recommendation; anyone deciding about sermorelin should make that decision with a clinician.
Who the trials enrolled
The adult sermorelin record is short and mostly male. The two treatment trials of sermorelin itself in older adults — Corpas 1992 (10 men) and Vittone 1997 (11 men) — enrolled no women at all. Every study below that did include women used either a close analogue of sermorelin or a related GHRH drug, and each is labelled as such.
| Study | Drug | Women enrolled | Length | Placebo? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Khorram et al., JCEM 1997 | [Nle27]GHRH(1-29) — a sermorelin analogue, 10 micrograms/kg nightly | 10 (with 9 men), aged 55–71 | 16 weeks | Yes, 4 weeks single-blind before treatment |
| Khorram et al., JCEM 1997 — immune substudy | Same | Same 10 | 16 weeks | Same |
| Veldhuis et al., Eur J Endocrinol 2005 | GHRH(1-44), the full-length hormone, 1 mg twice daily | 10 postmenopausal | 3 months | No — compared with each woman's own baseline |
| Baker et al., Arch Neurol 2012 | Tesamorelin, 1 mg nightly | Part of 152 adults aged 55–87 | 20 weeks | Yes, double-blind |
| Antonijevic et al., Sleep Res Online 2000 | GHRH, 4 × 50 micrograms IV in one night | 36 (16 with depression, 20 controls), aged 19–76 | One night | Yes |
| Mathias et al., Psychoneuroendocrinology 2007 | GHRH, 4 × 25 or 4 × 50 micrograms IV in one night | Healthy young women | One night per dose | Yes |
Every abstract above was opened on 7 October 2026. The Khorram analogue differs from sermorelin by one amino acid, a norleucine at position 27; it is the closest relative with a long trial in women, and it is not sermorelin itself.
What changed in women — and what changed only in men
Khorram 1997 is the only trial that ran a sermorelin-class drug for months in both sexes and reported them separately. The split is the most useful thing the record holds on this question.
| Outcome at 16 weeks | Women | Men |
|---|---|---|
| Night-time growth hormone | Up (P < 0.01) | Up (P < 0.05) |
| IGF-1 | Up within 2 weeks, back toward baseline by week 16 | Same |
| Growth-hormone-binding protein | Up within 4 weeks | No change |
| Skin thickness (calipers, hands and forearms) | Up | Up |
| Lean body mass (DEXA) | No change | Up |
| Insulin sensitivity | No change | Up |
| General well-being, libido (questionnaire) | No change | Up |
| Body weight, blood pressure, bone density, sleep quality | No change | No change |
The authors' own summary was that the analogue "induced anabolic effects favoring men more than women." The immune substudy, on the same 19 people, found no sex difference: B cells and activated T cells rose in both. Ten women is a small number; the table is a signal from one trial, and nobody has repeated it.
The growth-hormone response itself was not weaker in women — integrated GH rose 70% in women and 107% in men in the immune paper. What differed was what happened downstream of it.
Visceral fat: the one positive body-composition result, from a different drug
Veldhuis 2005 gave ten postmenopausal women the full 44-amino-acid hormone, GHRH(1-44), at 1 mg twice a day for three months. Overnight GH roughly doubled (+98%), IGF-1 rose 71%, abdominal visceral fat fell 16% and two walking and stair-climbing tests got faster. Seven of the ten women had skin reactions where they injected.
Three things limit what that says about sermorelin. The molecule is the full-length hormone, not the 29-amino-acid fragment. The dose — 2 mg a day — is several times what clinics list for sermorelin. And there was no placebo group, so the fat change is measured against each woman's own starting scan, with no control for the season, diet or the attention of being in a study.
The placebo-controlled visceral-fat record in this drug family belongs to tesamorelin, and it comes from trials in people with HIV. That record is on our tesamorelin results page. In Baker 2012, a trial of 152 older adults of both sexes, tesamorelin lowered percent body fat by 7.4% over 20 weeks; the abstract does not split the result by sex.
Sleep: the result that runs opposite to the marketing
Better sleep is the first benefit most clinic pages list. In women, the sleep-laboratory evidence runs the other way.
GHRH given at night deepens sleep in young men — the Munich group's own papers treat that as the established starting point. When the Munich group led by Axel Steiger tested women, the result reversed. In Antonijevic 2000, 4 × 50 micrograms of GHRH increased non-REM sleep in men "while decreasing it in women", in patients with depression and healthy controls alike. Because that study mixed pre- and postmenopausal women and did not time the nights to the menstrual cycle, the group repeated it in young women on days 4–6 of the cycle: in Mathias 2007, REM sleep fell after the lower dose and stage 4 deep sleep fell after the higher one. Their conclusion: "systemic GHRH impairs sleep in women."
Two caveats keep this in proportion. These were single nights of intravenous GHRH in a sleep laboratory, not months of nightly injections under the skin. And the 16-week Khorram trial, which did use nightly injections, found sleep quality by questionnaire unchanged in women — neither better nor worse. What no study shows is the improvement in women's sleep that is offered as the first sign the drug is working.
Estrogen changes the baseline
For women on hormone therapy, the route matters to any GH-axis measurement. In Bellantoni 1996, sixteen postmenopausal women took oral conjugated estrogen and transdermal estradiol for six weeks each. Oral estrogen raised spontaneous GH but lowered IGF-1; the patch changed neither. The GH response to an injected GHRH dose was the same before and after either form.
The practical meaning is about measurement, not advice: IGF-1 is the blood test clinics use to track sermorelin, and in a woman taking oral estrogen it starts lower for a reason unrelated to the GH axis. None of the sermorelin-class trials in women reported results by hormone-therapy use.
The dose gap, for women specifically
The trial doses were set by body weight or were large: 10 micrograms per kilogram nightly in Khorram (about 650 micrograms for a 65 kg woman), 2 mg a day of a different molecule in Veldhuis, 1 mg a day of tesamorelin in Baker. Clinic sermorelin listings, with sources and dates, are in our sermorelin dose record and our page on sermorelin tablets and nasal spray; none of the women's results above was measured at those listed amounts or by those routes. These figures are reported as trial protocols. They are not a dose for anyone.
What is not established
- Any effect of sermorelin itself in women: no trial of the unmodified drug enrolled adult women.
- Any effect on menopause symptoms — hot flushes, night sweats, mood, vaginal dryness. None was an outcome in any trial found.
- Any effect in women under 55, or in premenopausal women outside a single night in a sleep laboratory.
- Any effect lasting beyond 16 weeks, or what happens after stopping.
- Safety in pregnancy or breastfeeding: no woman in either state was enrolled. Tesamorelin's label lists pregnancy as a contraindication.
- Whether the sex difference in Khorram holds in a larger trial.
What sermorelin is, in plain terms, is explained in Peptide Lexicon's sermorelin entry. The outcome record for both sexes, set against the clinic timelines, is on our sermorelin results page, and how the drug compares with a ghrelin-receptor peptide is on our ipamorelin vs sermorelin page. MuscleLedger's peptides for women page covers the gym questions.
Sources and dates
- Khorram O, Laughlin GA, Yen SS. Endocrine and metabolic effects of long-term administration of [Nle27]GHRH-(1-29)-NH2 in age-advanced men and women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 1997;82(5):1472–9. PMID 9141536. Abstract read 2026-10-07.
- Khorram O, Yeung M, Vu L, Yen SS. Effects of [norleucine27]GHRH (1-29)-NH2 administration on the immune system of aging men and women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 1997;82(11):3590–6. PMID 9360512. Read 2026-10-07.
- Veldhuis JD, Patrie JM, Frick K, Weltman JY, Weltman AL. Administration of recombinant human GHRH-1,44-amide for 3 months reduces abdominal visceral fat mass and increases physical performance measures in postmenopausal women. Eur J Endocrinol 2005;153(5):669–77. PMID 16260425. Read 2026-10-07.
- Baker LD et al. Effects of growth hormone–releasing hormone on cognitive function in adults with mild cognitive impairment and healthy older adults. Arch Neurol 2012;69(11):1420–9. PMID 22869065; NCT00257712. Read 2026-10-07.
- Antonijevic IA, Murck H, Frieboes RM, Barthelmes J, Steiger A. Sexually dimorphic effects of GHRH on sleep-endocrine activity in patients with depression and normal controls — part I: the sleep EEG. Sleep Res Online 2000;3(1):5–13. PMID 11382894. Read 2026-10-07.
- Mathias S et al. Systemic growth hormone-releasing hormone (GHRH) impairs sleep in healthy young women. Psychoneuroendocrinology 2007;32(8–10):1021–7. PMID 17850984. Read 2026-10-07.
- Bellantoni MF et al. Effects of oral versus transdermal estrogen on the growth hormone/insulin-like growth factor I axis in younger and older postmenopausal women. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 1996;81(8):2848–53. PMID 8768841. Read 2026-10-07.
- Corpas E et al. J Clin Endocrinol Metab 1992;75(2):530–5, PMID 1379256; Vittone J et al. Metabolism 1997;46(1):89–96, PMID 9005976 — cited for their all-male enrolment. Read 2026-10-06.
- EGRIFTA WR (tesamorelin) prescribing information, Theratechnologies, effective 2026-07-29, via openFDA; read 2026-10-07 for the pregnancy contraindication.