Page last checked 2026-08-12

Tesamorelin vs sermorelin

Tesamorelin is an approved American medicine. Sermorelin was one too, until FDA withdrew both of its approvals in 2009. That withdrawal is the reason sermorelin is made up by compounding pharmacies today, and it is the difference that shapes everything else on this page.

Source: Read from the two Egrifta labels on DailyMed, the Federal Register notice on the Geref withdrawal, and the published sermorelin trials

What matters first

Direct head-to-head trial: None published
Tesamorelin record: FDA label; 1 row, each carrying its own source
Sermorelin record: limited human data; 4 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 Sermorelin, line by line

11 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 Sermorelin compared line by line, from the FDA labels, published trials and regulatory notices each one rests on
Question	Tesamorelin	Sermorelin
Is it approved today	Yes. Sold as Egrifta SV and Egrifta WR	No. Both approvals were withdrawn on 18 June 2009
What it is	A growth hormone-releasing factor analog	The first 29 amino acids of growth hormone-releasing hormone
What it is approved to treat	Excess belly fat in adults who have HIV and lipodystrophy. That one use, and nothing else	Nothing. The two uses it once held were pituitary testing and growth failure in children
Was either ever approved for aging or body shape in healthy adultsThe same for both	No	No
What the label says about weight	It says the drug is not approved for weight loss, and calls its effect on body weight neutral	There is no label, so there is nothing to say it either way
The dose	1.4 mg once a day into the belly, on the Egrifta SV label	No label dose exists. The trials used 30 mcg per kg a day in children, and 0.5 or 1 mg twice a day in older men
Is that dose a flat amount or a per-kilogram one	Flat. 1.4 mg, whoever you are	Mostly per kilogram of body weight, which does not become a vial amount without a weight
Longest published human course	26 weeks, in the trials both current labels rest their safety on	Twelve months in children. The one adult study ran 14 days
What the longest adult study measured	Belly fat, IGF-1 and blood sugar, over 26 weeks	Hormone levels over 14 days. Not body shape, strength, sleep or anything a person would notice
Presentations sold	Two. Egrifta SV holds 2 mg a vial and Egrifta WR holds 11.6 mg, and their labels say the two are not swappable	Four vial strengths, split across pharmacy and research channels
Does either have a boxed warningThe same for both	No	No
Strength of evidence	FDA label	limited human data
Published dose rows	1 row, each carrying its own source	4 rows, each carrying its own source

Has anyone tested Tesamorelin against Sermorelin 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.

7Comparison detailsFDA reports, pair-specific findings, search phrasing, and full-record handoffs

What has been reported to the FDA about each?

Tesamorelin: 3,517 reports. Sermorelin: 59 reports. Both were read from FDA’s side-effect report system on 2026-08-17.

Reports filed with FDA naming Tesamorelin or Sermorelin, 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
Sermorelin	59 reports	SERMORELIN · SERMORELIN ACETATE · SERMORELIN 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

Sermorelin 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.

The difference between the two sets of FDA reports is not proof of a safety difference. It mainly reflects how the products and terms are reported.

Tesamorelin has a manufacturer, and a manufacturer that hears about a serious reaction is obliged to pass it to FDA. Sermorelin has no manufacturer of an approved product, because there is no approved product. A compounding pharmacy is not under the same duty, and a person injecting something bought online has nobody prompting them to file.

So the smaller number here is a measure of who is watching, not of what happens. Read the other way round it is the more useful fact: for one of these two, somebody is counting.

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" · Sermorelin: patient.drug.medicinalproduct:"sermorelin"

The withdrawal is the reason sermorelin is on pharmacy shelves

Geref was a real American medicine twice over. FDA approved the first version in December 1990 for testing whether the pituitary can release growth hormone, and a second version in September 1997 for growth failure in children.

EMD Serono stopped selling both in 2008, and the approvals were withdrawn on 18 June 2009. FDA later put on record that neither product had been pulled for reasons of safety or effectiveness.

That finding is not a footnote. A medicine withdrawn that way leaves a compounding pathway open behind it, and a medicine withdrawn for safety does not. It is why sermorelin sits on pharmacy formularies while most peptides on this site do not.

Tesamorelin never left. So it is prescribed as itself, with a label a regulator has read, and it is not made up from a bulk substance.

The only one of the two with a label says it does not change weight

Both Egrifta labels say this plainly: the drug is not approved for weight loss because its effect on body weight is neutral.

That matters more than it first sounds. Both of these peptides are sold online for body shape. Only one of them has ever had that question put to a regulator, and the answer that came back was no.

Sermorelin has no label at all, so it makes no claim and refuses none. An absence of a claim is not a denial, and it is not support either.

Same receptor, and two records that cannot be subtracted

Both act at the same pituitary receptor, so it is tempting to line their numbers up. Doing that would be wrong, and the studies show why.

The Egrifta trials ran 26 weeks in adults with HIV and lipodystrophy. By week 26, IGF-1 had passed two standard deviations above normal in 47 in 100 people and three in 36 in 100. HbA1c reached 6.5% or higher in 5 in 100, against 1 in 100 on placebo. The label asks for both to be watched.

The one adult sermorelin study ran 14 days in healthy men of about 68. Only the 1 mg arm lifted growth hormone and IGF-I above the men’s own starting level. Serum phosphate rose. Blood sugar, blood pressure and blood counts did not move.

Different people, different lengths, different measurements. The gap between those two sets of numbers is the gap between two experiments, not between two drugs.

Ipamorelin is not the third option in this comparison

People often ask for these two alongside ipamorelin. It belongs in a different group. Tesamorelin and sermorelin both work at the growth hormone-releasing hormone receptor; ipamorelin works at the ghrelin receptor instead.

So it is not a stronger or weaker version of either. It pulls a different lever, which is why sellers pair it with them rather than offering it instead of them.

Its human evidence consists of two phase 2 trials in people recovering from bowel surgery, with doses given into a vein. Neither beat placebo on its main measure.

What about “Sermorelin 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 — “Tesamorelin peptide vs sermorelin” — 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

Sermorelin limited human data

The sermorelin record in full Sermorelin side effects, with a source for each

9primary sources, each with the day we read it — open the documents used on this page