Hexarelin | Reviews, Clinical Trials, and Safety

Hexarelin for Muscle Preservation: A study by Sirago et al. (2017) looked at the potential of growth hormone secretagogues to attenuate the extreme loss of muscle (cachexia), which is commonly associated with cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy [16].

In the study, the scientists administered a chemotherapy agent (cisplatin) to rats to induce the deleterious health markers typically seen in cancer patients. The rats were then divided into three groups: a control group that did not receive hexarelin, a hexarelin group, and a group that received JMV2894 (another GHS).

The cisplatin resulted in mitochondrial dysfunction and subsequent muscle atrophy in the control group, but the groups that received GHS treatment showed significant resilience against loss of muscle and strength. The researchers attributed this to the effects of hexarelin in improving mitochondrial functioning, reducing inflammatory processes, and regulating cell turnover to maintain healthy muscle mass [16].

Hexarelin for Weight Loss: Apart from stimulating growth hormone release, hexarelin also improves fat metabolism by its action at the CD36 scavenger receptor [13].

To further illuminate the fat-burning potential of hexarelin, a team of Canadian researchers examined cell cultures of rodents’ white fat to see how treatment with hexarelin would affect adipocytes. Hexarelin significantly decreased triglyceride accumulation in the treated cells via its action at CD36 while increasing the expression of genes responsible for fat metabolism and concurrently increasing ATP-related energy production in associated genes [17].

Because the majority of body fat is stored in white fat cells, the effect of hexarelin on lipolysis shows great potential in the weight loss field. Not only might hexarelin increase overweight subjects’ ability to burn fat, but its upregulation of ATP production may result in their feeling more energetic and motivated to perform physical activity.

Hexarelin for Brain Health: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative disease characterized by mutated neuroblastoma cells. ALS causes neuronal apoptosis in several areas of the nervous system, resulting in loss of motor control, paralysis, and eventually death. While there are currently only palliative treatments for ALS available, researchers hope to find a more effective treatment and eventually a cure for the disease.

In the pursuit of a possible GHS-based treatment for ALS, researchers treated mutated cells with hexarelin and JMV2894 in a 2023 study. Meanti et al. (2023) chose to include hexarelin in the experiment because of the peptide’s known cytoprotective and anti-inflammatory effects, hoping to slow or reverse cell death and reduce cytotoxic inflammation [3].

The study showed that hexarelin treatment did improve the apoptosis of mutated cells and increased the survival of healthy cells. While more investigation is needed to understand how growth hormone secretagogues can be used to treat ALS, these results show great promise for future application of hexarelin therapy [3].