AOD-9604 Dosage Chart: What Trials Used vs What Reddit Reports

This AOD-9604 dosage chart keeps two things apart that most dosing pages blend: the doses researchers actually gave in animal and human studies, and the amounts people say they inject. They do not match. Every human trial used an infusion or a swallowed capsule, while nearly every online chart describes a daily subcutaneous injection of 250 to 500 mcg that no human trial has tested.

For what the peptide is and how its trial history reads overall, see our AOD-9604 peptide guide. This page is the dose-focused companion.

AOD-9604 dosage chart: what the human trials used

Start with the table, because it answers the question most people arrive with: which numbers appear in a paper. The honest answer is that they are per-kilogram animal doses, one-off infusions and oral capsules measured in milligrams.

The table has a pattern worth noticing. The animal work that launched the compound used 250 to 500 µg/kg a day, and the rat study (PMID 11146367) gave it by mouth. The mouse study (PMID 11713213) reported that AOD-9604 lowered body weight and fat over 14 days of chronic dosing, and also found the effect was not mediated directly through the beta-3 adrenergic receptor, even though expression of that receptor rose. A 2015 rabbit study (PMID 26275694) injected 0.25 mg into each knee weekly and reported better cartilage scores, with the best result when it was paired with hyaluronic acid. That is a joint injection in rabbits, not a fat-loss dose.

The human rows come mostly from the FDA's December 2024 briefing for its Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee, which summarised the sponsor's studies. The intravenous study gave 23 obese adults single infusions of 25, 50 or 100 mcg/kg, and a fat-metabolism marker rose, but weight change was not different from placebo. The short oral studies used 9, 27 and 54 mg. In the 300-person, 12-week oral study, reported only as a conference abstract, the 1 mg arm did best and the higher doses did no better. The final 24-week study, with 536 patients enrolled, used 0.25, 0.5 and 1 mg a day alongside diet and exercise, found no significant difference from placebo, and the company stopped developing it for obesity. The FDA wrote that in most of the studies it found, AOD-9604 failed to show benefit for weight reduction against placebo.

Why there is no tested injected dose

Look again at the route column. The only human dosing that exists is intravenous or oral. The FDA review states that neither the nominations nor its own search found information on subcutaneous or transdermal use in humans. That is the dose most charts present as standard.

You can turn the intravenous trial into a rough scale. At 25 to 100 mcg/kg, a 90 kg adult would have received about 2.3 to 9 mg in one infusion. That is my arithmetic, not a figure from a paper, and it describes a single infusion in a research ward, not a daily injection. The peptide clears fast: in pigs given 400 µg/kg intravenously, the half-life was about 3 minutes (Moré and Kenley 2014, as summarised by the FDA). That tells you a daily injection and an hour-long infusion are very different exposures, and nobody has measured what a subcutaneous dose does to blood levels in people.

Two further limits belong next to any dose chart. First, in the FDA review of long-term animal toxicity, a 26-week rat study showed dose-dependent changes in a bone-turnover marker (osteocalcin), and a 9-month monkey study showed slight liver cell vacuolation that FDA said could indicate liver damage. The agency read these as signals that could matter at systemic exposure, not as proof of harm in people. Second, the FDA flags peptide aggregation and impurities as safety concerns, so a labelled dose and a delivered dose may differ.

The regulatory position, as far as I could verify: AOD-9604 is not a component of any FDA-approved drug and has no USP monograph, per the FDA briefing. A 2015 paper on detecting it (PMID 25208511) states it is banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. Secondary summaries place it in FDA's Category 2 for compounding, which means a safety concern; I could not confirm the current list entry on FDA's own page, so treat that point as unverified.

What Reddit users report taking

I read a Reddit file of 221 posts and comments from 22 threads across 13 subreddits. Twelve threads, in 10 subreddits, mentioned AOD-9604 in any way. After removing bot notices, deleted comments, moderator removals, vendor-style posts and people asking questions, 6 comments were first-hand reports of someone using AOD-9604. All six came from one thread in r/Retatrutide, a community mostly focused on a different drug. Please treat the rest of this section as a small, self-selected, unverified sample.

Most dose information on Reddit was not first-hand at all. It came from five guide-style posts. A r/1UpGuides cheat sheet lists 300 to 500 mcg a day, ideally in the morning before exercise, for 8 to 12 weeks with 4 to 6 weeks off. A r/RUOPeptidesCommunity post says 250 to 500 mcg a day under the skin while fasted. A r/ResearchCompoundHub reference gives 300 mcg on weekday mornings for 12 weeks. A r/BodyHackGuide thread titled "500 or 300?" opens with the line that the most popular dose is 300 and got no answers in our file. A r/BiohackPhilippines post, which says an AI tool wrote it, gives a start of 250 to 300 mcg and up to 500 mcg. Not one points to a human trial of injected dosing. In r/Biohacking, a user asked whether it is taken twice a week or seven days a week; the thread had no replies in our data.

Here is what the six first-hand commenters said.

Three said it helped, in loose terms. One wrote "Well I've been on AOD-9604 for 9mos and I absolutely love it!" (a r/Retatrutide commenter, Dec 2025, link), giving no dose and no measurement. Another, on tirzepatide, added AOD and a GH-secretagogue blend for three weeks and posted a before-and-after photo, which we cannot verify. A third wrote "It doesn’t help me lose weight, but I feel it helps with abdominal remodeling." (a r/Retatrutide commenter, Mar 2025, link), taking it fasted by injection before swimming. Note that two of the three were taking other peptides at the same time, so nothing can be pinned on AOD-9604 alone.

Three reported nothing. One ran it with CJC-1295 and ipamorelin for 8 weeks with no change in fat, muscle or weight, then switched to retatrutide and lost 8 pounds in 4 weeks. Another said it did nothing and that their weight tracks calories. The third wrote "AOD was a waste of time in my opinion. Got some results from IPA/CJC. But nothing compared to Reta." (a r/Retatrutide commenter, Mar 2025, link). Other commenters said it does not work without saying they had used it; we did not count them.

How long before effects? There was no consistent answer. The null reports covered about 8 weeks. The original poster, who was weighing a related fragment, argued 8 weeks is too short and planned to go as long as 24, which is a belief, not data.

The thread's author tested a different peptide, Frag 176-191, which lacks AOD-9604's added tyrosine, so we did not count that account. Its dose math is still a warning: the author wrote that a maximum of 1,000 mcg as two 500 mcg shots meant a 5 mg vial gives "basically 20 shots". At 500 mcg a shot, 5 mg gives 10. At 250 mcg it gives 20. That one-line slip is how people end up with a vial that runs out in half the time they planned.

One more outlier: the same author reported that urine ketone strips showed ketosis breaking after the injection and concluded the fragment raises blood sugar. Strips are not a glucose test, it was one person on a low-carb diet and a GLP-1 drug, so read it as a prompt to measure properly, not a finding.

Reconstitution math: mg, mL and syringe units

Most dosing arguments are really reconstitution arguments. The vial holds a fixed mass of freeze-dried powder, and the water you add only changes concentration, so it changes how much liquid you draw for the same dose.

The formula is units on a U-100 syringe = dose in mcg ÷ concentration in mcg/mL × 100. A worked example: a 5 mg vial plus 2 mL of bacteriostatic water is 5,000 mcg in 2 mL, which is 2,500 mcg/mL. A 300 mcg dose is 300 ÷ 2,500 = 0.12 mL, which is 12 units on a syringe where 100 units equals 1 mL.

Scaling by vial size works the same way. A 5 mg vial holds 20 doses of 250 mcg, 16 full doses of 300 mcg or 10 doses of 500 mcg. A 12-week course at 300 mcg daily is 84 doses, or 25.2 mg, which is just over five 5 mg vials. Five mornings a week for 12 weeks is 60 doses, or 18 mg, about 3.6 vials. A Reddit commenter said a reconstituted vial lasts up to 14 days refrigerated; I could not verify that figure, and a 5 mg vial at 300 mcg lasts about 16 days, so stability and vial size interact. Ask the supplier for stability data rather than relying on a forum number.

If you want a vendor to check against, Ascension Peptides sells AOD-9604 5 mg at $55.00 as of 2026-10-11 (regular price $74.99, so $11.00 per mg at the sale price). Kovera Labs tests every batch (HPLC, LC-MS identity, net content, endotoxin, sterility and heavy metals), more than 98 percent of tested batches pass, and the batch certificates are public. Prices are in US dollars, shipping is US only and all sales are final. New customers can use code PEPTIDEDECK for 50 percent off. It is a research chemical, not for human use. Our guide to where to buy AOD-9604 explains how to read a certificate of analysis.

Never carry a "units" number from someone else's vial onto yours. The FDA briefing cites marketed products at 600 mcg/mL and 1,000 mcg/mL, and a different concentration changes the draw completely.

Timing, frequency and cycle length

No study tested a schedule for injected AOD-9604, so what follows is what sources say, not what to do. The guides cluster on once daily, in the morning, fasted, with some splitting the dose across two injections. The stated reason is that eating raises insulin, which suppresses fat breakdown. That is plausible biology but has not been shown to change outcomes for this peptide. The FDA briefing also notes that clinic sites recommend injecting 30 minutes before eating.

The very short half-life, about 3 minutes in pigs, is the usual argument for daily rather than weekly dosing, and it makes the fasted-morning window a guess.

Cycle length is convention. The guides we read say 8 to 12 weeks, then 2 to 6 weeks off, and the ResearchCompoundHub reference runs 12 weeks. One commenter asked why that reference had no time-off column, which fairly sums up the issue. The animal studies ran 14 to 19 days and the long human trial ran 24 weeks by mouth. Nothing is known about repeated injected cycles over years.

What changes the dose

Route changes everything. The 1 mg oral dose that did best in the 12-week trial is not equivalent to 1 mg injected, and the injected 300 mcg figure has no human anchor at all. Guides that tell you oral needs three to six times more are extrapolating, and the FDA review itself found animal oral bioavailability data too variable to quote.

Body size is the second gap. Animal and intravenous studies dosed per kilogram, while charts use flat numbers. The third is the product itself: peptide content, salt form and purity vary, and the FDA review found vendors confusing the free base and the acetate form, with certificates that did not match the label. A certificate that lists the right compound and net content matters more than the dose you pick.

Context matters too. The trials enrolled people with obesity alongside diet and exercise programs, and several Reddit commenters argued that a calorie deficit explains most results, which fits the trial record.

Who should avoid it: anyone pregnant or breastfeeding, anyone with an active cancer or a history of one, and anyone on diabetes medicine who has not talked to a clinician, since no one has measured how it interacts. Stop and get care for a rash that spreads, a swollen or infected injection site, or any symptom you did not have before. A prescription weight-loss medicine with real trial support, discussed with a doctor, is a stronger route if weight is the goal.

If you decide to buy AOD-9604 anyway, Ascension Peptides lists a 5 mg vial at $55.00 as of 2026-10-11, with the same public batch certificates, US-only shipping and final sales described above. See also our AOD-9604 for sale page.

FAQ

What is the standard AOD-9604 dosage?

There is no standard dose, because no regulator has approved one. Online guides repeat 250 to 500 mcg once a day by subcutaneous injection, usually 300 mcg, but no human trial tested that route. Trials used infusions and oral doses of 0.25 to 54 mg.

How much AOD-9604 should I take daily?

This page cannot tell you that and it is not medical advice. The reported range in community guides is 250 to 500 mcg a day. A clinician who knows your health history is the right person to advise on any dose.

How many units of AOD-9604 is 300 mcg?

It depends on the water you added. With a 5 mg vial and 2 mL of water, the concentration is 2.5 mg/mL and 300 mcg is 0.12 mL, or 12 units on a U-100 syringe. With 1 mL it is 6 units, and with 3 mL it is 18 units.

How long can you take AOD-9604 for?

Nobody knows for injected use. Guides suggest 8 to 12 weeks, then a break, but that is convention. The longest human trial ran 24 weeks and used a daily tablet, not an injection.

Does AOD-9604 actually work for weight loss?

The best human evidence is negative. The largest trial, with 536 patients enrolled, did not beat placebo and the developer stopped. In our Reddit sample, 3 of 6 first-hand reports said it did nothing.