PepRank

HGH Fragment 176-191

40%positive14 reports

Also: Frag 176-191 · HGH Frag · hGH C-terminal fragment · YLRIVQCRSVEGSCGF (as usually sold)

CautionInjection / Nasal

Growth-hormone tail fragment sold for fat loss; AOD-9604's near-twin, untested in humans and rarely felt.

#23 of 61 research peptides · updated
Access
Grey market
Cost / month
≈ €27–72
researchers' estimate; no listing to price
InjectionFelt in 3–4 weeks

Builds over days or weeks of regular use rather than with each dose.

14 user reports
Positive 5Mixed 1Nothing 4Negative 4

  • r/Peptidesource· · 2 upvotesOriginal ↗

    So far I've definitely seen a decrease in body fat and have slimmed down a lot in the trouble areas of the midsection. The first week there was about a week of mild headaches, but all has been good since then.

    Positive150 mcg/day · Nasal · 1 month

    portion control and 1.5-2 h training 5 days a week; also BPC-157/TB-500, ipamorelin and CJC-1295

  • r/Peptidesource· · 2 upvotesOriginal ↗

    I’ve ran combos and frag before many times for different reasons with great results

    PositiveInjection · several cycles, 8 weeks on / 8 off

    alone and in combinations; reads like a sales pitch for the blend

  • r/Peptidesource· · 7 upvotesOriginal ↗

    I am very active in the gym 4-5 lifting sessions with cardio after per week and I feel like I am gaining weight on my midsection as well as the scale. It's been about 1 month total

    NegativeInjection · about 1 month

    frag and hexarelin twice daily, BPC-157/TB-500, CJC-1295 with DAC, semaglutide 2.4 mg; lifting 4-5 times a week

Users report
Mixed and heavily confounded. About a third report fat loss or a better body composition, but every one of those was dieting hard or also on CJC-1295/ipamorelin, BPC-157, retatrutide or tirzepatide; the cleanest positive is a month of 150 mcg nasal frag with portion control and 1.5-2 h of daily training. Another third felt nothing and say real GH or a GLP-1 does far more. The rest are negatives: vials that gel or turn cloudy so they cannot be used, weight gain on a GH-peptide stack, and appetite returning on a frag/CJC/ipa blend. A week of mild headaches is the one side effect mentioned. Experienced users repeat that it is the same thing as AOD-9604, which lost to placebo. Felt nothing: 5 of 15 reports felt nothing; 4 more were negative.
Best effects
Fat loss in 'trouble areas' (confounded by diet and other drugs) · reported body-composition change on frag/CJC/ipamorelin blends
Downsides
No noticeable effect for many · vials gel or go cloudy after reconstitution · mild headaches in the first week (one report) · appetite and bloating on blends (one report)
Watch
No human data at all for the fragment; its safety record is borrowed from AOD-9604, which differs by one residue · Grey-market injectable: purity, sterility and aggregation (gelling) unverified; aggregated peptide raises immunogenicity concerns · Prohibited in sport at all times (WADA S2.2.3, named explicitly)
Evidence
Animal only — Rat and mouse work only (the bare 177-191 fragment was antilipogenic but not lipolytic in rat fat pads). The human trials belong to AOD-9604, the Tyr-modified analogue: six trials, about 900 people, placebo-like safety, no IGF-1 or glucose change and no weight loss.
Caveat
Read with the AOD-9604 entry: the two are one residue apart, and what is sold as 'Frag 176-191' usually carries AOD's tyrosine anyway. AOD's six human trials found it safe and ineffective, and nothing suggests the fragment would differ, but the bare fragment itself has never been given to people in a study. It does not bind the GH receptor or raise IGF-1 in animals, which is why it is not treated as a GH-axis drug.
Typical use
250-500 mcg subq once or twice daily, fasted (often before cardio), in 4-8 week cycles; one nasal user took 150 mcg a day. Not worth it on current evidence.
Getting it
Research-peptide vendors in 2-5 mg vials, often blended with CJC-1295 and ipamorelin; a few take it nasally. Despite the name, most vendors list the sequence YLRIVQCRSVEGSCGF, with tyrosine where native GH has phenylalanine at position 176, which is the AOD-9604 sequence; the vial is usually the same molecule as AOD-9604. Reconstitutes poorly: many vials gel or cloud in bacteriostatic water, and vendors advise acetic acid.
Stacked with
CJC-1295 and ipamorelin: Sold as a three-way blend; the positive blend reports cannot separate frag from the GH secretagogues. · Retatrutide or tirzepatide: Added to break a GLP-1 stall; users who tried it say the GLP-1 does nearly all the work. · AOD-9604: Some stack both, which experienced users point out is the same peptide twice.

User reports 15

  • r/Peptidesource· · 2 upvotesOriginal ↗

    So far I've definitely seen a decrease in body fat and have slimmed down a lot in the trouble areas of the midsection. The first week there was about a week of mild headaches, but all has been good since then.

    Positive150 mcg/day · Nasal · 1 month

    portion control and 1.5-2 h training 5 days a week; also BPC-157/TB-500, ipamorelin and CJC-1295

  • r/Peptidesource· · 2 upvotesOriginal ↗

    I’ve ran combos and frag before many times for different reasons with great results

    PositiveInjection · several cycles, 8 weeks on / 8 off

    alone and in combinations; reads like a sales pitch for the blend

  • r/Biohackers· · 1 upvotesOriginal ↗

    I always use HGH frag during my cut season (summer time) and I really happy with results of course with a good diet, and training.

    Positiveevery summer cut

    with diet and training

  • r/Peptidesource· · 1 upvotesOriginal ↗

    I've seen a some results with CJC+Ipa combo but then had great results with Fragment+CJC+Ipa combo it seems.

    Positiveblend of 6 mg frag, 3 mg CJC-1295, 3 mg ipamorelin per vial · Injection · under a month

    training 6 days a week; frag only ever taken in a blend

  • r/BodyHackGuide· · 1 upvotesOriginal ↗

    I do think I've seen a more noticeable change in my body composition with the frag mix.

    PositiveInjection

    frag/CJC/ipamorelin blend split morning and bedtime, fasted, on top of low-dose retatrutide

  • r/BiohackingU· · 44 upvotesOriginal ↗

    These two are constantly hyped for fat loss, but in my experience, they’re inconsistent. They’re also notorious for gelling up or turning cloudy in the fridge, which makes them a pain to use.

    Mixed

    subreddit operator's 'most overrated peptides' list, AOD-9604 and frag together

  • r/Biohackers· · 3 upvotesOriginal ↗

    I tried several peptides (CJC1295, Ipamorelin, Somatropin, HGH Frag 176-191), but the only one that made a difference was Somatropin.

    Nothing

    perimenopausal woman on HRT who tried CJC-1295, ipamorelin, somatropin and frag

  • r/Peptidesource· · 1 upvotesOriginal ↗

    Hgh frag doesn’t really help that much with fat loss, at least in my lab rats experience.

    Nothing

    'lab rats' is the usual euphemism for self-use

  • r/BiohackingU· · 1 upvotesOriginal ↗

    aod and frag never did much for me either, way too hit or miss.

    Nothing

    also tried AOD-9604

  • r/Biohackers· · 1 upvotesOriginal ↗

    My experience is that gh peptides did little to nothing. No comparison w/ actual hGH in terms of the effect on IGF-1.

    Nothing

    answering 'do GH frags work?'

  • r/Peptidesource· · 7 upvotesOriginal ↗

    I am very active in the gym 4-5 lifting sessions with cardio after per week and I feel like I am gaining weight on my midsection as well as the scale. It's been about 1 month total

    NegativeInjection · about 1 month

    frag and hexarelin twice daily, BPC-157/TB-500, CJC-1295 with DAC, semaglutide 2.4 mg; lifting 4-5 times a week

  • r/Biohackers· · 3 upvotesOriginal ↗

    I started taking for for 5 days with TirZ now appetite is coming back and feel bloated anyone else have this experience?

    NegativeInjection · 5 days

    frag/CJC-1295/ipamorelin blend added to tirzepatide

  • r/BodyHackGuide· · 2 upvotesOriginal ↗

    Reconstituted a vial with 1ml BAC. Got one dose out of it and then it turned to gel within a couple hours.

    NegativeInjection

    5 mg vials in bacteriostatic water; vendor suggested acetic acid

  • r/PeptidePathways· · 1 upvotesOriginal ↗

    Both vials of frag have been gel like and I’ve decided to drop it.

    NegativeInjection · about 3 weeks

    with hexarelin, BPC-157/TB-500 and testosterone

  • r/RetaForBodybuilding· · 3 upvotesOriginal ↗

    If you read the post you know that I thought it was a waste of money. HGH is superior and works every time.

    Nothingvendor-adjacent

    also tried AOD-9604; poster steers readers to a GH distributor he links

Safety

Tier by safety barStrict CautionBalanced CautionEvidence only Clean

Seen harmMechanismData gapSilent harmProduct

Seen harm 0/3
Widely used grey-market for years, yet no serious adverse event appears in the literature or in first-hand reports (a week of mild headaches, bloating and unusable gelled vials are the worst). Use is undocumented rather than measured, so this is absence of reports, not proof of safety. r/Peptidesource: HGH Frag a month in (headaches the first week) ↗
Mechanism 1/3
Unlike GH and the secretagogues it does not bind the GH receptor, raise IGF-1, cause hyperglycaemia or drive cell proliferation in animal work, and the near-identical AOD-9604 left IGF-1 and glucose unchanged in people. What remains is speculative: immunogenicity from aggregated or impure peptide. Heffernan et al. 2001: AOD9604 does not bind the GH receptor or induce proliferation ↗Stier et al. 2013: AOD9604 human safety, no IGF-1 or glucose change ↗
Data gap 3/3
No human study has ever used the bare fragment. AOD-9604's six trials (about 900 people) bridge closely, since it differs only by tyrosine for phenylalanine at position 176 and is in practice the sequence most vendors ship under this name, but by the rubric an analogue's trials are not the sold molecule's. Wu & Ng 1993: hGH 177-191 in rats (animal only) ↗Glow Peptides: vendors ship the Tyr sequence as '176-191' ↗
Silent harm 1/3
With no credible serious mechanism, rated on the plausible harms: injection-site and allergic reactions and headaches, mostly noticed at once and resolving on stopping.
Product 3/3
Bought as grey-market injectable powder of unverified purity and sterility; it aggregates readily, and users report vials that gel or cloud in bacteriostatic water and vendors telling them to add acetic acid. A few use it nasally. r/PeptidePathways: defective, cloudy Fragment 176-191 from an EU vendor ↗r/BodyHackGuide: HGH Frag turned to gel after reconstitution ↗
Never if
Pregnancy or breastfeeding (no human data) · Competitive athletes (prohibited at all times under WADA S2.2.3)

Studies 5

Sources 4

More in Metabolic & weight all 10 →

  1. 1AOD-9604 YLRIVQCRSVEGSCGF (16 residues) Caution Oral / Injection≈ €45–90 / month53%positive26 reportsGH C-terminal fragment that failed obesity trials; safe-looking but doesn't work.
  2. 2Lactotripeptides (VPP and IPP) VPP (3 residues) CautionSupplement Oral≈ €15–35 / month49%positive4 reportsFermented-milk ACE-inhibitor tripeptides; lower blood pressure by a few mmHg, best data in Japan.
  3. 35-Amino-1MQ Caution Oral / Injection≈ €72–1440 / month41%positive28 reportsSmall-molecule NNMT inhibitor sold alongside peptides for fat loss and energy; no human data.Novel systemic enzyme inhibitor with zero human safety data; unknown long-term metabolic and methylation effects.
  4. 4Survodutide Excluded Injection≈ €36–140 / month56%positive24 reportsBoehringer's GLP-1/glucagon dual agonist: 12-13% weight loss and large liver-fat cuts in phase 3; unapproved.Unapproved drug bought as grey-market vials, usually stacked on tirzepatide: the GLP-1 class's pancreatitis, gallbladder and dehydration-kidney routes, a glucagon-driven heart-rate rise whose cardiovascular safety trial is still running, and GI effects harsh enough that about one in five phase 3 participants stopped.
  5. 5Mazdutide Excluded Injection≈ €36–140 / month55%positive21 reportsGLP-1/glucagon dual agonist approved in China in 2025 (Xinermei); grey-market 'ghetto reta' with tirzepatide.Carries the GLP-1 class's serious-harm routes on its own label (pancreatitis, gallbladder disease, acute kidney injury, boxed warning for thyroid C-cell tumours in rodents) plus a glucagon-driven heart-rate rise; outside China it is bought as unregulated research vials and mostly stacked on tirzepatide, a combination no trial has tested.
  6. 6GLP-1 agonists (semaglutide, tirzepatide, retatrutide) HAEGTFTSDVSSYLEGQAAKEFIAWLVKGRG (31 residues) Excluded Injection≈ €27–1210 / month49%positive55 reportsMost effective weight-loss drugs ever; powerful systemic drugs, not 'clean' wellness peptides.Potent drugs with real serious-harm paths (pancreatitis, gallbladder, GI, heart rate, NAION). Worth it for obesity/diabetes under a doctor, but outside a 'clean general-health peptide' list.
  7. 7MOTS-c MRWQEMGYIFYPRKLR (16 residues) Excluded Injection≈ €22–88 / month42%positive52 reportsMitochondrial AMPK-activating peptide; vivid endurance anecdotes, allergic sensitisation reports.Borderline: recurring reports of allergic sensitisation and anaphylaxis-like events, plus no human data on the native peptide at the doses used.
  8. 8Tesamorelin YADAIFTNSYRKVLGQLSARKLLQDIMSRQQGESNQERGARARL (44 residues) Excluded Injection≈ €240–480 / month43%positive29 reportsFDA-approved GHRH analogue for visceral fat; raises IGF-1, anaphylaxis reports.GH/IGF-1 axis elevation (neoplasm and glucose warnings on label) plus anaphylaxis reports.
  9. 9Cagrilintide Excluded Injection≈ €27–110 / month36%positive25 reportsNovo's weekly amylin analogue, the 'cagri' in CagriSema; a hard appetite brake, often with heavy fatigue.Unapproved drug bought as grey-market vials and usually stacked on retatrutide or tirzepatide outside any trial: gallbladder disease and fast lean-mass loss, severe hypoglycaemia if combined with insulin (amylin class), days of not eating from dosing errors with home-reconstituted vials, and a pH-sensitive peptide sold in plain powder.

Sequence beads

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.