Home›The Library›Hexarelin
Hexarelin
Its growth-hormone-releasing effect is real and old human pharmacology confirms it. Its much-hyped "protects the heart" property is a real, distinct finding too — but it comes almost entirely from rat and cultured-cell studies, not a trial in people with heart disease.
In brief
Should you care? Yes, if you've heard the "cardioprotective" claim specifically — it's a real, mechanistically distinct finding, but from animal hearts, not human ones.The short version
- GH-release is old, real, human-confirmed pharmacology.
- The cardioprotective mechanism is genuine — GH-independent, acting through GHS-R1a and the receptor CD36.
- That evidence is rat and cell-culture work, not a human cardiac trial.
What it is
Hexarelin is a synthetic growth hormone-releasing hexapeptide, a potent agonist of the ghrelin receptor (GHS-R1a), first characterized in the 1990s.
What the evidence shows
GH release itself has real, if old, human pharmacodynamic support from growth-hormone-secretagogue characterization studies of that era. The cardioprotective mechanism — independent of GH itself, acting through GHS-R1a and the scavenger receptor CD36 in heart tissue — is well described: hexarelin reduced ischemia/reperfusion injury in a rat model, including reduced left-ventricular pressure elevation, reduced coronary perfusion pressure, and reduced creatine kinase release (Bisi et al., J Endocrinol Invest 1999, PMID 10465272). That is real, but it is rat-heart and cultured-cardiomyocyte work — we did not locate a completed human cardiac-outcome trial of hexarelin.
Regulatory status
Never approved anywhere as a therapeutic. Listed by name (as "examorelin") under the World Anti-Doping Agency's S2 GHRP category, prohibited in and out of competition.
What's marketed vs. what's shown
Sold in the grey market for muscle building, recovery and "heart health" — the last claim borrowing directly from rat cardioprotection data without a human cardiac trial behind it.
References
- Bisi et al., "Growth Hormone-Independent Cardioprotective Effects of Hexarelin in the Rat," J Endocrinol Invest 1999, PMID 10465272.