“In the early 2020s, interest in GLP-1 weight loss drugs exploded,” said CNN. Now, “a new buzzword is taking over”: peptides. Once a niche interest among powerlifters and bodybuilders, the injectable substances have flooded the online wellness sphere. Athletes and wellness influencers hail peptides as a way to speed muscle recovery, lose weight and slow ageing. Demand is surging and authorities are “starting to take notice”.
What are peptides?
Short chains of amino acids (small proteins) produced by our bodies to help regulate hormones, reduce inflammation and repair tissue. Synthetic versions are manufactured to mimic, or even enhance, those naturally occurring proteins.
Peptides are the P in GLP-1s, the class of weight-loss drugs that includes Ozempic and Wegovy. Plenty of long-established drugs, such as insulin, are peptide-based, but “grey-market injectable peptides” are “unregulated, experimental compounds”, said The Guardian. Some are “bootleg versions of approved drugs”, sold for “a fraction of their market price” online.
Are they legal?
Peptides are in “a legal and regulatory middle zone” known as the grey market, said the BBC. Many popular versions aren’t considered medicines in the UK, so they’re unregulated by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. As they’re not approved for human use, these peptides aren’t subject to quality controls.
In the US, the Food and Drug Administration bars pharmacies from compounding peptides, but they can be bought from manufacturers in China, which export them under the label “for research purposes only”, or “not for human consumption” – a legal loophole. In practice, they are “packaged, dosed and marketed in ways that clearly anticipate human use”, said three public health experts from Australia on The Conversation. This creates “a parallel market”, outside clinical oversight and regulation.
Evidence of the benefits for humans “remains limited”. Most claims are based on “a handful of laboratory studies”, usually on animals. The FDA warns that unregulated peptides pose “serious safety risks” because of potential impurities, including the risk of allergic reactions.
Yet such peptides have “exploded onto the well-being market” since weight-loss drugs “became mainstream”, said the BBC. “The success of regulated GLP-1 drugs has ‘normalised’ using a needle, lowering the psychological barrier to self-injection,” said Dr Mike Mrozinski, a GP. Users, said Lancaster University anatomy professor Adam Taylor, “are, in essence, becoming lab rats”. |
