Page last checked 2026-08-12

Tesamorelin vs CJC-1295

Tesamorelin has an FDA label, a fixed daily dose and a 26-week trial record. CJC-1295 is one name covering two different molecules, and buyers usually cannot tell which one they are holding. Neither version has ever been approved.

Source: Read from the two Egrifta labels on DailyMed and the two published CJC-1295 human studies

What matters first

Direct head-to-head trial: None published
Tesamorelin record: FDA label; 1 row, each carrying its own source
CJC-1295 record: limited human data; 3 rows, each carrying its own source

Medically reviewed by Jennifer Montecillo, MD · non-practicing medical reviewerReviewed 2026-08-13every number here is sourced

Tesamorelin and CJC-1295, line by line

9 authored lines, plus two read straight off the two records. Where a source says nothing, the cell says so rather than borrowing from the other column.

Tesamorelin and CJC-1295 compared line by line, from the FDA labels, published trials and regulatory notices each one rests on
Question	Tesamorelin	CJC-1295
How many molecules the name covers	One	Two. With the drug-affinity complex it lasts days. Without it, minutes
Is it approved	Yes, since 2010	No, and no company is trying. The firm that built the long-acting form dropped it
The dose	1.4 mg once a day, printed on the label	No approved dose. The studies gave 30 to 60 mcg per kg, and 60 to 90 mcg per kg, as one injection
Flat amount or per kilogram	Flat	Per kilogram, in every published study
How long people were followed	26 weeks, with 543 on the drug and 263 on placebo	28 days in one study and 49 in the other, after a single injection
What the studies measured	Belly fat, IGF-1, blood sugar and reported side effects	Growth hormone and IGF-I levels only. No trial reported a body-shape or clinical result
Does vial strength tell the two versions apart	Not applicable. It is dispensed as a named product	No. 5 mg is the usual strength for both versions
Is there a pharmacopeial standard for the material	Yes, it is an approved drug product	No, for either version
Does either have an established dose for aging or body shapeThe same for both	No	No
Strength of evidence	FDA label	limited human data
Published dose rows	1 row, each carrying its own source	3 rows, each carrying its own source

Has anyone tested Tesamorelin against CJC-1295 directly?

No. No trial has put these two against each other, so nothing on this page is a measured difference between them.

Each was studied on its own, in different people, for different lengths of time. Setting two separate studies side by side and subtracting one from the other is the standard mistake with a pair like this, and the gap it produces can be bigger than any real gap between the two.

So each record below is reported on its own terms, with its own citation, and the two are never put on one chart.

6Comparison detailsFDA reports, pair-specific findings, search phrasing, and full-record handoffs

What has been reported to the FDA about each?

Tesamorelin: 3,517 reports. CJC-1295: 4 reports. Both were read from FDA’s side-effect report system on 2026-08-17.

Reports filed with FDA naming Tesamorelin or CJC-1295, with the product names each search matched
Name searched	Reports filed	Product names those reports arrived under
Tesamorelin	3,517 reports	EGRIFTA · EGRIFTA SV · EGRIFTA WR
CJC-1295	4 reports	CJC-1295\IPAMORELIN · CJC-1295 · CJC-1295/ipamorelin acetate

What Tesamorelin reports are about

The five most-named reactions, each as a share of this drug’s own reports — never a share of the people who took it.

Product dose omission issue — 299 reports, 8.5% of Tesamorelin reports
Arthralgia — 268 reports, 7.6% of Tesamorelin reports
Injection site pain — 255 reports, 7.3% of Tesamorelin reports
Drug ineffective — 191 reports, 5.4% of Tesamorelin reports
Weight increased — 189 reports, 5.4% of Tesamorelin reports

CJC-1295 has too few reports for a breakdown to mean anything, so none is published here. A list of the most-named reactions out of a handful of reports would read like a pattern and would be noise.

Look at the product names each search matched, below the counts. For one of these two they are the product. For the other, most of them are blends.

That is the identity problem showing up in a federal database. Reports naming CJC-1295 largely arrive naming it alongside ipamorelin, because that is how it is sold — as a mixture, in one vial, under a joined-up name.

A report filed against a mixture cannot be attributed to one peptide in it. So these counts are not small versions of a safety record. They are a record of what people are actually holding.

These are counts of reports filed with the FDA, not rates. Nobody knows how many people took the drug and did not file a report, and a report is not a finding that the drug caused what was reported.

There is no denominator. FAERS counts reports that were filed. It does not count the people who took the drug, so there is no bottom half to the fraction. Any figure on this page that looks like a percentage is a share of this drug’s reports — never a share of the people who took it.
A report is not proof the drug did it. FDA does not require a reporter to establish cause. A report says somebody noticed something and thought the drug was worth naming. Some of these events were caused by the drug, some were caused by the illness it was prescribed for, and some were coincidence — FAERS does not separate them.
A bigger number can just mean a more-prescribed drug. More reports can simply mean that more people use the drug, that it is newer, or that it receives more news and legal attention. Raw report totals do not tell you which drug is safer.
The same event can be counted twice. One event can reach FAERS through more than one channel — the patient, the prescriber and the manufacturer can all file. FDA does not guarantee that the public files are de-duplicated.

Do not rely on openFDA to make decisions regarding medical care. While we make every effort to ensure that data is accurate, you should assume all results are unvalidated. We may limit or otherwise restrict your access to the API in line with our Terms of Service.

Read 2026-08-17 from FDA’s side-effect report API, which FDA last refreshed 2026-07-30 · US Government public domain

Tesamorelin: patient.drug.openfda.generic_name:"tesamorelin" OR patient.drug.medicinalproduct:"tesamorelin" OR patient.drug.openfda.brand_name:"EGRIFTA" OR patient.drug.medicinalproduct:"EGRIFTA" · CJC-1295: patient.drug.medicinalproduct:"cjc 1295"

The name is a problem before the evidence is

CJC-1295 properly names a piece of growth hormone-releasing hormone carrying a chemical arm called the drug-affinity complex. That arm bonds the peptide to a blood protein and stretches its life from minutes into days.

Most material sold under the name has no arm. That is a different molecule, modified GRF 1-29, and it clears fast.

Both published human studies used the version with the arm. Reading their numbers onto the version without it is the single most consequential mistake available with this peptide, and the vial strength is the same either way, so the label on the box cannot settle it.

Tesamorelin has none of this. One product, one identity, two presentations, and their own labels state which is which and that they are not swappable.

One was given every day for half a year. The other was given once and watched

The Egrifta record is a daily injection carried through 26 weeks in a randomized trial with a placebo group.

The CJC-1295 record is two single injections. One study raised growth hormone 2 to 10 times for six days or more and IGF-I 1.5 to 3 times for nine to eleven days. The other found the growth hormone pulses carried on, and that the two doses it used did not differ from each other.

So the two do not disagree about anything. They answer questions of different sizes. A single injection followed for nine days cannot tell you what daily use over months does, and the people selling weekly milligram schedules are not working from either study.

Only one of them tells you what to watch

A steady, raised hormone level is not the state the body normally runs. It normally makes pulses. One CJC-1295 study measured basal growth hormone 7.5 times higher a week after a single dose.

Nobody has published what that does over months, because nobody has run it over months.

The Egrifta label does the opposite. It names what rose, and asks for it to be watched. IGF-1 passed two standard deviations above normal in 47 in 100 people by week 26. HbA1c reached 6.5% or higher in 5 in 100, against 1 in 100 on placebo.

That is the practical difference between an approved medicine and a research compound. It is not that one is safe and the other is not. It is that one arrives with a regulator’s list of what to monitor, and the other arrives with nobody’s.

What about “CJC-1295 vs tesamorelin”?

Same question, worded the other way round. This page answers it, and there is no second page for the reversed wording.

The other wordings people use for this pair — “CJC-1295 ipamorelin vs tesamorelin” — land here too. Publishing each ordering separately would mean near-identical pages competing with each other for one answer. One page per pair, and every phrasing reaches it.

The full record for each

This page is the difference between them. Each compound’s own dose rows, reaction list and regulatory note sit on its own page.

Tesamorelin FDA label

The tesamorelin record in full Tesamorelin side effects, with a source for each

CJC-1295 limited human data

The cjc-1295 record in full CJC-1295 side effects, with a source for each

6primary sources, each with the day we read it — open the documents used on this page