Ara-290 has helped my pain an almost unbelievable amount. I was starting to believe I might never regain somewhat normal function in my hands. For years my hands were limited in function due to severe neuropathic pain, I still have significant pain, but much more function
GlowingInjection
years of severe neuropathic pain in hands/arms; ME/CFS, MCAS
I have seen really great results. My neuropathy was very bad and it has improved significantly. I have tried almost everything and this was the most helpful by far. Whether it lasts I’ll have to see.
I used 4mg /d for a few weeks with no change in my pain.
NothingRecovery · 4 mg/day · Injection · a few weeks
painful post-COVID neuropathy in the feet
Users report
Results are split in the neuropathy communities. About half report clear relief, often within 1-2 weeks: nerve pain or numbness easing in small-fibre, diabetic, chemo, long-COVID and sciatica/stenosis cases, though much of the praise comes from stacks with BPC-157/TB-500, KPV or KLOW. Roughly 20% feel nothing even after months at 4-8 mg/day, and about 15% get worse for a while, usually a painful nerve flare when ramping the dose, worst in people with allodynia or autoimmune neuropathy. Relief often fades weeks after stopping, and cost is a constant complaint.
Best effects
Less neuropathic burning/tingling · possible small-nerve fibre regrowth (corneal density in trials) · sciatica relief (anecdotal)
Downsides
Expensive · benefit fades after stopping · transient nerve flare when ramping dose · gels in bacteriostatic water
Watch
Generic: grey-market purity · Theoretical only: acts on the EPO-receptor/CD131 'innate repair receptor'; trials showed no erythropoiesis or safety signal
Evidence
Human RCTs — Sarcoidosis small-fibre neuropathy, n=22 and n=64; diabetes; no serious adverse events
Typical use
1-4 mg/day subQ for 4-8 weeks (trials used 4 mg/day for 28 days); reconstitute with sterile water or PBS. Users report 2–4 mg/day (median 4 mg, n=17).
Getting it
Never approved and the sponsor (Araim) stalled; sold as a research chemical, occasionally resold through clinics at a large markup.
Stacked with
BPC-157 + TB-500: The most common pairing for sciatica, disc and post-surgical nerve pain; several users credit the combination over ARA-290 alone. · KPV / KLOW: Added for inflammation in stenosis, MCAS and long-COVID neuropathy; makes it hard to tell which peptide did the work. · GHK-Cu: One long-term user ran it intranasally with GHK-Cu for stenosis nerve pain, with the combination lasting about 12 hours per dose.
Ara-290 has helped my pain an almost unbelievable amount. I was starting to believe I might never regain somewhat normal function in my hands. For years my hands were limited in function due to severe neuropathic pain, I still have significant pain, but much more function
GlowingInjection
years of severe neuropathic pain in hands/arms; ME/CFS, MCAS
I have seen really great results. My neuropathy was very bad and it has improved significantly. I have tried almost everything and this was the most helpful by far. Whether it lasts I’ll have to see.
ARA-290 at 8mg once per day allowed me to use my hands normally with no adaptive devices and greatly reduced need for pain aids. The pain is still noticable, esp with heavy use of arms, but reduced to the point it rarely impedes daily activities anymore.
ARA was 1mg 5 days a week for 6 months and every other day since then. My nerve pain had stopped at 2 months. I have long Covid, non length dependent small fibre neuropathy and microangiopathy.
GlowingRecovery · 1 mg 5 days/week, then every other day · Injection · 8 months
long COVID non-length-dependent small fibre neuropathy; stacked with KPV and thymosin alpha-1
Friday was the 1st day since my constant back pain started 15 mo ago that I could stand for longer than 15 seconds without pain beginning & increasing intensity.
My feet and lower legs have been numb for about 10 years. I started using ARA-290 about a month ago. The feeling in my feet is signifantly returning. I am totally blown away about this.
I’ve been on ARA-290 for three days and it’s been a really positive experience for me. 2 days at 4mg and 1 day at 8mg. The feeling of what I & my doc suspect is excitotoxicity is bothersome and still there, but the rest of my body feels more quiet and stable.
Positive4-8 mg/day · 3 days
long COVID, doctor-supervised; with Thymogen and TB4
I just had major foot surgery. 3 large incisions. I’ve been on BPC for quite some time. 3 days after my surgery I also started Cartalax. And, because there I nerves involved, I started ARA-290 for nerve repair. Amazing how much it’s healed in 12 days.
PositiveRecovery · 12 days
post major foot surgery with nerve involvement; with BPC-157 and Cartalax
As far as the numbness and stinging goes, I've had dramatic improvements for those particular symptoms and the results seem to last a pretty long time.
PositiveRecovery · Injection · 2-4 week courses, three times
systemic small fibre neuropathy with autonomic symptoms and twitching
I used ARA-290 myself for about 5–6 months, including roughly 3 months at 8 mg daily, but unfortunately I didn’t notice any meaningful improvement in my autonomic symptoms.
NothingRecovery · up to 8 mg/day · Injection · 5-6 months (3 at 8 mg/day)
I started at .5 mg, then 1 mg, then 2 mg, 3 mg and finally 4 mg. The nerves in my feet flared very painfully beginning at 2 mg. I stopped today and the flare is a bit less.
NegativeRecovery · 0.5 mg titrated to 4 mg/day · Injection · 5 days (later a 3-4 week course)
I just knew my feet hurt really bad and I needed to go get more help. Before that I’d have flare ups but they’d fluctuate. After the ARA-290 I had to go and get help.
Started at 1mg/day subQx4 days. Stomach lining feels fried - a lot like Imuran. Stomach pain woke me up last 2 nights. Fatigue worse, muscles feel weaker/crampy - exertion is much harder. Foot & pudendal neuropathic pain unchanged. Gastroparesis improved.
I started on #wolverine for the pain in my hip and knees. #ARA290 for the neuropathy. ... Now the neuropathy is going to take a little longer but after my first round of shots I can feel the numbness subsiding.
Positivevendor-adjacent
genetic neuropathy; Wolverine stack credited for hip/knee pain, also on retatrutide
Yes, multiple disc issues, stenosis and DDD. It helps with radiating pain for sure. It takes time and you have to run a lot. I always keep a couple 30mg kits in the personal stash.
Each bead is one amino acid in the peptide's chain, coloured by its side chain: grey for non-polar, cyan for polar, blue for positively charged and fuchsia for negatively charged. Length and mix tell related peptides apart at a glance, from a two-residue dipeptide like carnosine to a 43-residue protein like thymosin beta-4. The colours describe chemistry only and predict neither effect nor safety.
non-polarpolarpositivenegative
Report grades
Every first-hand Reddit or X report is graded on its own, from glowing through positive, mixed, nothing and negative to bad reaction, and the bar shows how those grades split. Posts that look vendor-adjacent stay on the peptide's page but are left out of the counts.
GlowingPositiveMixedNothingNegativeBad reaction
% positive
The share of a peptide's graded Reddit and X reports that are glowing or positive, vendor-adjacent posts left out. A peptide with few reports is pulled toward the average of all reports, as if it had eight average ones besides its own, so two glowing posts cannot top the list. Kept peptides rank by the same reports' mean grade, shrunk the same way, and excluded ones follow in that order.
Researcher estimate
No first-hand report of this peptide has been graded yet, so the figure is the researchers' own rating out of 10 from what they read about it. It ranks alongside the computed scores until reports arrive.
Safety tier
Each peptide is tiered clean, caution or excluded from its five risk axes under the chosen safety bar. An excluded peptide has a plausible route to serious harm, so it stays listed with the reason but ranks behind every other entry, however good its reviews.
Safety bar
The safety bar sets how much risk it takes to exclude a peptide. Strict: out on any serious mechanism with little human data, or any documented serious harm. Balanced: out on documented serious harm (unless it is obvious, reversible and from a regulated product), or a serious mechanism whose harm would be silent with no human data at all. Evidence only: out only on documented serious harm in humans that is lasting, delayed or from grey-market product.
Seen harm
Documented serious adverse events in humans, from 0 for none despite real exposure to 3 for deaths or several well-documented serious harms. Serious means a hospital or emergency visit or harm lasting weeks, so a headache or a bad night does not count.
Mechanism
A plausible biological route to serious harm at the doses people use, such as growth-factor signalling, hormone-axis suppression, heart or blood-pressure effects or immune activation. It runs from 0 when none is known to 3 when a dangerous pathway has been shown in living animals.
Data gap
How little human safety data exists for the molecule actually sold, from 0 for an approved drug with large trials and years of use to 3 for no human safety data at all. A modified analogue does not inherit its parent's trials.
Silent harm
Whether the feared harm would show quickly or stay hidden, from 0 when it is obvious and goes on stopping to 3 when it is silent and delayed, like tumour promotion or slow organ damage. User reports cannot reveal a harm that takes years to appear, so a high score here limits what good reviews can tell you.
Product
The risk of what people actually buy, from 0 for a regulated pharmacy or supplement product taken by mouth or on the skin to 3 for a grey-market injectable. In one dataset of 6,441 grey-market samples, 42–71% failed basic quality criteria and 15% carried endotoxin.
Evidence
The strongest kind of study behind the peptide's effects, from an approved drug through human controlled trials and small human studies to animal work or nothing of its own. Animal results often fail to carry over to people.
Access
How people get it: as an approved drug, a compounded prescription, an over-the-counter supplement or from the grey market, where nobody checks the vial. The channel decides both the legal position and the risk of a bad batch.
Price per month
Thirty days of the typical dose, from its low end to its high end, priced at the listing a careful buyer would choose: in stock, from a shop scoring 4 of 5 on trust (third-party tested where no score is set), failing that 3, a pure pack before a blend, a European shop first, then the cheapest per mg. The range is the dose's, not the shops'. A per-dose amount counts once a day unless the dose says otherwise. Prices are in euros at ECB rates of 2026-10-29, before shipping; the shop table keeps each listing's price per mg, per gram for bulk supplements. Where no listing can be priced the researchers' own estimate stands in, and says so.
Dose users report
The middle half of the daily doses stated in at least five first-hand reports, vendor posts left out. Where its middle sits more than twice above or below the declared dose, the month is priced at it as well, since what people take is what they pay for.
Testing
Whether the shop publishes lab results: third-party tested means an independent lab checks each batch, own COA means the shop's own certificate of analysis, and no public tests means neither. A certificate shows purity, not safety.
Added peptide
Some packs sold under one peptide's name hold a second one, such as 5 mg GHK-Cu in a nasal kit, stated only in the description. Sprayed in the nose or injected it reaches the blood like an injection, so it carries the risk of that route and is tiered as the injectable form, whatever its tier on the skin. A pack whose page gives no contents list may hold more than its name.