Sermorelin Dosing: What the Research Actually Supports

If you search for a "sermorelin dosage chart," you will find dozens of confident-looking tables — usually some round number of micrograms at bedtime, a few nights a week, scaled up for muscle or anti-aging goals. Almost none of them cite a source. So before reproducing another chart, it is worth asking a simple question: what doses were actually studied, and in whom? The honest answer is that the well-documented dosing for sermorelin comes from pediatric growth-hormone-deficiency research and from its use as a diagnostic agent — not from the adult wellness use it is marketed for today.

This article walks through the doses that appear in the published literature and the discontinued FDA label, and it is careful to separate those from the unstandardized regimens used off-label now. It is not medical advice and it is not a dosing calculator. Sermorelin is a prescription-only, compounded peptide; the only person who should set your dose is a clinician who can monitor you. Our goal here is to show you what the evidence base really contains so you can have a better-informed conversation with that prescriber.

The diagnostic dose: 1 microgram per kilogram, given once

The single best-established sermorelin dose isn't a treatment dose at all — it's a diagnostic one. Sermorelin is GHRH(1-29), the shortest fragment of growth-hormone-releasing hormone that keeps full biological activity, and it was used for years as a provocative test of pituitary growth-hormone reserve¹. In that role, the standard protocol is a single intravenous dose of about 1 microgram per kilogram of body weight, after which growth hormone is measured to see how the pituitary responds².

This matters for two reasons. First, it is the dose with the clearest provenance: a defined amount, a defined route, a defined purpose, validated across multiple studies²¹. Second, it tells you what sermorelin does at a measurable dose — it triggers a short, sharp pulse of growth hormone from your own pituitary⁹. A one-time diagnostic pulse, however, says nothing about what repeated dosing achieves over weeks or months. That is a separate question with much weaker answers.

The treatment dose with real data: 30 mcg/kg/day in children

The most rigorously studied treatment regimen for sermorelin is, again, not the adult anti-aging use. It is the treatment of children with growth hormone deficiency. In a multicenter study of 110 prepubertal GH-deficient children, sermorelin was given as a once-daily subcutaneous injection of 30 micrograms per kilogram at bedtime, and mean height velocity rose from about 4.1 cm/year to roughly 7–8 cm/year over the first year³. A review of the pediatric evidence settled on the same figure: once-daily subcutaneous sermorelin 30 mcg/kg at bedtime was effective in some children with idiopathic GH deficiency, with height-velocity gains sustained over 12 months⁴.

Dose-comparison work fills in the shape of the curve. In one randomized pediatric trial, children received either low-dose GHRH(1-29) at 30 mcg/kg/day or high-dose at 60 mcg/kg/day (both split into three daily doses) or growth hormone itself; height velocity was lowest in the low-dose group and comparable between high-dose GHRH and GH⁵. A separate comparative study likewise pitted GHRH(1-29) against growth hormone directly⁶. The consistent takeaway across this literature: 30 mcg/kg/day is the anchor dose, higher doses can push the effect further, and even then GHRH analogs generally produced less growth than injected GH⁴⁵.

Two cautions before anyone extrapolates these numbers. These trials were in children with a diagnosed deficiency, whose growing skeletons and intact-but-underdriven pituitaries are a very different physiology from a healthy adult. And the timing detail — bedtime — was deliberate, meant to amplify the natural nocturnal GH pulse, which is also why sermorelin's plausible effects cluster around sleep rather than daytime performance. We cover that nighttime angle in our pillar guide to sermorelin for sleep, recovery and healthy aging and in sermorelin and deep sleep.

Why there is no validated adult 'anti-aging' dose

Here is the gap the dosage charts paper over: there is no large, modern, randomized trial establishing an effective adult dose of sermorelin for muscle, fat loss, recovery, or longevity. The closest human data point is discouraging. When older men were given single nightly subcutaneous injections of GHRH(1-29) — the same peptide — it raised nocturnal growth hormone but did not significantly raise IGF-1 or change body composition⁷. In other words, a plausible adult dose produced the lab signal (a GH bump) without the outcome (a changed body). We unpack that null result in detail in does sermorelin build muscle or burn fat?.

There are also pharmacological reasons dosing is hard to pin down. Native GHRH(1-29) is cleared quickly — it has a very short circulating half-life because peptidases chew it up rapidly⁸ (we explain exactly how short, and why the effect still outlasts the drug, in sermorelin's half-life) — which is exactly why researchers built longer-acting analogs like pegylated GHRH and tesamorelin to get a sustained signal¹⁰. A short-lived peptide given once at night is, mechanistically, a brief nudge, not a steady anabolic drive. That fragility is part of why compounded oral and sublingual versions disappoint, a point we cover in do oral and sublingual sermorelin actually work?.

Where the GHRH class has a defined adult dose, it belongs to a different, FDA-approved molecule. Tesamorelin — a stabilized GHRH(1-44) analog, not sermorelin — is dosed at 2 mg subcutaneously once daily for HIV-associated visceral fat in its phase 3 program¹¹¹², and a research cognitive-aging trial used tesamorelin 1 mg/day in older adults¹³. Those are real, dosed regimens, but they are not sermorelin, and importing their numbers onto a compounded GHRH(1-29) product is exactly the kind of substitution we flag throughout the site. See tesamorelin vs sermorelin for the full distinction.

How adult sermorelin is actually prescribed today (and why it varies)

In current off-label practice, compounding pharmacies and telehealth clinics typically supply sermorelin as a lyophilized powder reconstituted into a multi-dose vial, with adults instructed to inject a fixed amount — often in the range of a couple hundred micrograms — subcutaneously at bedtime, frequently five nights on and two off (whether those weekly breaks are actually necessary is its own question — we examine the desensitization rationale in do you need to cycle sermorelin?; the practical injection mechanics are covered in how to inject sermorelin, and the reason it is dosed at night on an empty stomach in best time to take sermorelin). We are describing what is commonly done, not endorsing a number, because these regimens are not standardized, not drawn from controlled adult outcome trials, and not FDA-cleared for these goals. The original branded product, Geref, was withdrawn from the market for commercial reasons, so every adult dose today is compounded — which means potency and purity depend on the pharmacy, and the "right" dose is whatever a prescriber sets and monitors, not a chart from the internet.

Because sermorelin works through the GH/IGF-1 axis, the monitoring priorities are the same ones that matter for the whole class: a clinician should track IGF-1 to gauge response and watch glucose tolerance, since GHRH-class agents can nudge it in some people¹⁰. Anyone with active cancer, and anyone pregnant, should not be using GH-axis stimulators off-label; the GH/IGF-1-and-cancer question is serious enough that we gave it its own piece — see does sermorelin cause cancer?. These are not decisions to self-direct from a dosage table.

The bottom line on sermorelin dosing

The doses with genuine evidence behind them are narrow and specific: about 1 mcg/kg intravenously as a one-time diagnostic test, and 30 mcg/kg/day subcutaneously at bedtime to treat growth-hormone-deficient children²³⁴. There is no validated, trial-backed adult dose for muscle, fat loss, or anti-aging, and the best-matched adult study showed a GH rise without a body-composition benefit⁷. The confident adult "dosage charts" online are extrapolations, not findings. If you are considering sermorelin, the only defensible path is a prescriber who orders baseline labs, sets a dose, and monitors IGF-1 and glucose — not a calculator. For the broader evidence picture, start with our pillar guide, and if you are weighing where to get it, we rank providers honestly in our guide to the best sermorelin providers.