Section 03 · dose context
What the papers used.
A reading of the published research doses — by population, by route, by duration. No recommendations. No instructions. The literature as it was administered.
What this page is — and is not
This page collects the doses that were administered in published peer-reviewed studies — doses given to specific populations under formal research protocols. It does not recommend any dose for any person or any use. There is no current FDA-approved finished sermorelin product on the US market [12].
The numbers come from the pediatric trial (30 mcg/kg nightly, subcutaneous), the aging studies (10 mcg/kg or 1 mg/day nightly), the HIV-lipodystrophy RCT (1 mg twice daily), and the pharmacokinetic work that mapped the half-life and bioavailability. What is clear from the published record is that injection is the delivery route with any evidence behind it — the intranasal bioavailability is only about 6 percent — and that nightly timing aligns with the body's own sleep-linked GH pulse.
Why this page exists
Dose context is one of the most-searched things about sermorelin and one of the most consistently misrepresented online. This page collects the doses that were administered in published peer-reviewed trials — including the original pediatric trial that supported the 1997 FDA approval — for research-reading purposes only. It does not recommend any dose for any use. It does not address compounding pharmacy practice. There is no current FDA-approved finished sermorelin product on the U.S. market [12].
Pediatric GH-deficiency dosing in the 1996 trial
The Geref International Study Group trial in prepubertal children with documented GH deficiency administered 30 mcg/kg sermorelin acetate subcutaneously, nightly, for at least six months [2]. Nightly timing was chosen to align with endogenous slow-wave-sleep GH pulses. Injections were given in the abdomen or thigh. The trial enrolled 110 children and the primary endpoint was annualized height velocity [2].
This is the dose and schedule that anchored the 1997 FDA approval of Geref. It is the cleanest dose-finding in the sermorelin literature, but it applies to a defined deficient pediatric population and should not be read across to other populations or other endpoints.
Aging research dosing (the Khorram and Vittone protocols)
Khorram and colleagues administered 10 mcg/kg subcutaneously, nightly, for 16 weeks to adults aged 55-71 [3]. Vittone and colleagues used a comparable nightly subcutaneous dose of GHRH(1-29) for six weeks in healthy elderly men [4]. The Baker cognitive trial in 137 older adults used a fixed 1 mg/day subcutaneous dose for 20 weeks rather than a body-weight-scaled dose [6].
These are research doses in defined trial populations under formal protocols. The literature does not establish a safe or effective dose for any indication in adults outside these protocols, and the trials themselves do not propose clinical use.
HIV-lipodystrophy dosing
The Koutkia JAMA RCT used 1 mg of GHRH subcutaneously, twice daily, for 12 weeks in HIV-positive men with lipodystrophy [5]. The Stanley tesamorelin trial in HIV-associated NAFLD used 2 mg of tesamorelin (a related GHRH analog) subcutaneously, daily, for 12 months [11]. The two studies use related but not identical molecules. They are included here for class context — the same GHRH-R / cAMP / PKA mechanism — not as a sermorelin protocol.
The half-life problem
Sermorelin's plasma half-life in humans is approximately 11-12 minutes [7]. Peak plasma concentrations appear 5-20 minutes after subcutaneous administration, and absolute bioavailability via the subcutaneous route is roughly 6 percent. The biological effect on GH release persists for about three hours after a single dose, despite the short plasma residence [7].
This pharmacokinetic profile is the reason every dosing protocol in the literature uses subcutaneous nightly administration. Oral routes are not viable for the native peptide. Intravenous routes were used in diagnostic stimulation testing (1 mcg/kg IV bolus paired with 30 g L-arginine in the historical sermorelin-arginine stimulation test) but are not part of any extended-dosing protocol [14]. Intranasal administration has been investigated only in limited research settings and is not a standard route for the molecule [7].
Reconstitution and stability in published research
Lyophilized sermorelin acetate is shipped freeze-dried and reconstituted with sterile water or bacteriostatic water (sterile water containing 0.9 percent benzyl alcohol as a preservative) immediately before research use. Stability research conducted under USP <797> compounding-pharmacy frameworks indicates that solutions reconstituted in bacteriostatic water and stored at 2-8 °C retain greater than 95 percent of label potency for approximately 28 days [17]. Reconstitution in sterile water without preservative shows substantially faster degradation — 30 to 50 percent potency loss beyond seven days at the same temperature [17].
Key research-handling considerations from the literature: avoid shaking the reconstituted vial (mechanical agitation denatures the peptide), protect from light, and avoid repeated freeze-thaw cycles [17]. The 28-day potency window from the compounding-pharmacy literature is one of the more practically consequential findings in the sermorelin record — and one of the easiest to misremember.