Evidence reviews
What the evidence actually shows
Independent reviews of the compounds circulating on the UK grey market. Each one grades the claims against how far they have actually been tested, states the regulatory position plainly, and names the red flags worth knowing.
Cagrilintide
Cagrilintide is a legitimate late-stage drug candidate that is mostly studied as half of a combination. Sold alone on the grey market, it is being used in a way the trial programme has largely not tested.
Read the review →GHK-Cu
Strong mechanistic data, thin human trial data, and an injectable form that has barely been studied in people.
Read the review →Ipamorelin
Ipamorelin is a genuine pharmacological compound that a pharmaceutical company took into human trials and then stopped developing. That decision tells you more than most of what is written about it since.
Read the review →KPV
KPV has a coherent anti-inflammatory rationale and a preclinical literature that is genuinely interesting. It also has virtually no human clinical trial evidence, which makes almost every claim made for it a hypothesis.
Read the review →Melanotan I
Melanotan I is the only compound in the tanning-peptide category with an approved medicine behind it. That approval is for a rare inherited light-sensitivity disorder, delivered as an implant under hospital supervision — which is a very different thing from an injectable vial bought online.
Read the review →Melanotan II
Melanotan II is the compound on this site with the clearest regulatory position and the sharpest safety signal. It has never been approved anywhere, the MHRA has warned about it repeatedly, and its association with changes to moles is the reason this page leads with risk rather than mechanism.
Read the review →MOTS-c
MOTS-c is a real discovery in mitochondrial biology and one of the least clinically tested compounds sold on the grey market. Almost everything claimed for it comes from mice.
Read the review →NAD+
NAD+ is one of the most important molecules in human metabolism. That is not in question. Whether injecting or infusing it produces any measurable clinical benefit is an entirely separate question, and the answer is far weaker than the marketing suggests.
Read the review →Peptide blends
Blends are sold under names like Wolverine, KLOW and Glow. None of them has a clinical trial literature, and there is a structural reason why: combining compounds that individually lack evidence does not create evidence for the combination.
Read the review →Retatrutide
Retatrutide has produced the largest weight-loss results ever recorded in randomised trials. It is also not approved in any country, which means every vial currently in circulation came from somewhere other than a manufacturer.
Read the review →SS-31 (Elamipretide)
SS-31 is unusual on this site: it has been through a large, expensive, well-run clinical programme. That programme produced one narrow approval and several outright failures — which is far more informative than no data at all.
Read the review →Tesamorelin
Tesamorelin has genuine phase 3 evidence — for reducing visceral fat in people with HIV-associated lipodystrophy. That is a narrow indication in a specific population, and it is not what the grey market sells it for.
Read the review →Tirzepatide
Tirzepatide is the rare case where the science is settled. It is a licensed UK medicine with large randomised trials behind it. That is precisely why buying it outside a pharmacy makes so little sense — and why counterfeits are so profitable.
Read the review →