SafetyEvidence-BasedUpdated 29 Sep 2026

CJC-1295 Side Effects (With Ipamorelin): What Trials Report

Name: CJC-1295 Side Effects (With Ipamorelin): What Trials Report
Creator: Peptides Vietnam
Published: 2026-09-29T00:00:00+07:00

CJC-1295 side effects in the published human trials were led by injection site reactions,⁹ with headache, loose stools or diarrhea, transient urticarial rash and flushing also reported in the single-dose study. Flushing reached every subject after high-dose injections in the multiple-dose study.⁹ The primary trial recorded no serious adverse reactions.¹ Those adverse-event figures come from just two small studies in healthy adults. A separate, larger Phase 2 trial in HIV associated visceral obesity was halted after a participant died, a death the attending physician judged most likely unrelated to the drug, and it never published results.⁵ Every one of those trials used CJC-1295 with DAC. The no-DAC form sold as mod GRF 1-29, and the CJC-1295 plus ipamorelin combination named in this page title, have no controlled human trial at all.⁶¹² This page reports what the trials recorded, and what they did not. It does not tell anyone what to take.

Healthy adults across three published papers (two trial papers covering three studies, plus a subset reanalysis), per the FDA⁹

~70%

Injection site reactions in active subjects, Study 1 data quoted by the FDA (source 9)

Controlled human trials of no-DAC or the ipamorelin combo⁶¹²

This is general education, not medical advice, and not a diagnosis. The human trial findings below come from two 2006 papers in healthy adults and reports of one halted Phase 2 trial. The per-event frequencies come from a December 2024 FDA regulatory review that quotes the published studies.⁹ Dose figures appear only to show what a study administered, always marked as not a recommendation. No CJC-1295 product is approved, and nothing here is a dose, a schedule, or an instruction to use it.

The side effects the trials recorded, by frequency

The strongest single safety statement in the human record is also the thinnest. The primary trial reported no serious adverse reactions and described CJC-1295 as "safe and relatively well tolerated" at the lower doses tested in short studies of healthy adults.¹ That abstract does not list the individual events or their frequencies. The per-event numbers below are recovered from a December 2024 FDA regulatory review, which quotes the same trials directly and attributes the figures to them, so read them as CJC-1295 with DAC trial data as quoted by the FDA, not as the abstract.⁹ Every figure in this section is a trial observation, never a recommendation.

Teichman 2006, single ascending dose study (Study 1), adverse events as quoted by the FDA:⁹

Adverse event	Reported frequency	Notes
Any adverse event	94% active (33 of 35) vs 29% placebo (2 of 7)	Study 1 overall
Injection site reactions	about 70% of active subjects, rare on placebo	Irritation, erythema, induration, pain or itching; more severe or prolonged at higher doses
Headache	63% active vs 14% placebo	Also high in the multiple-dose study
Transient urticarial rash at the injection site	almost 30% of subjects	Not dose related
Diarrhea or loose stools	43% active; 45% then 100% in the two highest dose groups	Active group only
Systemic vasodilatory reactions	30% of active subjects only	Flushing, warmth, transient low blood pressure

All of these except the transient urticarial rash were more common at the higher doses, and the injection-site reactions in particular grew more severe or prolonged as the dose rose.⁹ The rash aside, the pattern is dose dependent.

The multiple-dose study (Teichman Study 2) tells a similar story. Injection-site reactions were reported in every actively treated subject. Among placebo subjects, mild injection-site redness was reported in three of four (75 percent), along with induration and urticaria.⁹ Flushing occurred only in treated subjects, started within 30 minutes and resolved in one to two hours, and rose with dose from 40 percent after low-dose injections to 100 percent after high-dose ones.⁹ Headache was not dose related and ranged from 20 to 80 percent across the dose groups, with 50 percent in the placebo group, and nausea or abdominal pain appeared in 20 percent of treated subjects only.⁹ Two isolated event types appeared in one or two subjects: transient involuntary leg muscle contractions with some loss of coordination in one subject, and transient dizziness and low blood pressure in two subjects, which resolved and did not recur.⁹

The second published study, Ionescu and Frohman 2006, recorded no serious adverse events; the events the FDA quotes from it were a dose-dependent rise in heart rate and dose-independent transient redness and tenderness at the injection site.⁹ Across the two Teichman studies the FDA notes no consistent changes in blood or urine laboratory values, including glucose and liver function tests, and no consistent electrocardiographic changes, while flagging that both of those studies recorded a high incidence of headache in the treated groups.⁹

Post-market surveillance adds almost nothing, because there is no marketed product to report on. An FDA search of the FAERS adverse-event database returned two reports, both excluded, one for insufficient information and one with no adverse event described, and a search of the CAERS food and supplement database retrieved no cases.⁹

One framing point matters for reading all of this. CJC-1295 sits in the same WADA class as other growth hormone releasing hormone analogues such as sermorelin and tesamorelin,⁴ but the numbers here are CJC-1295 with DAC trial data as reported by the FDA, not figures borrowed from another analogue.⁹ For how side effects compare across peptide classes, the peptide side effects by class guide sets the wider frame, and the tesamorelin profile covers tesamorelin, an approved GHRH analogue in the group.

The doses and durations the studies used

These are descriptions of what the studies administered, so the side-effect figures above have a reference. None of them is a protocol to follow.

In two ascending-dose studies at two sites, healthy adults ages 21 to 61 received CJC-1295 or placebo subcutaneously, as one of four single doses in the first study and as two or three weekly or biweekly doses in the second (trial dose, not a recommendation, PMID 16352683).¹ The primary trial described tolerability as best at 30 or 60 mcg/kg (trial dose, not a recommendation, PMID 16352683).¹ On pharmacology, a single injection raised mean plasma growth hormone 2 to 10 fold for 6 days or more and mean IGF-I 1.5 to 3 fold for 9 to 11 days, with an estimated half-life of 5.8 to 8.1 days, and after multiple doses IGF-I stayed above baseline for up to 28 days.¹

In the second published study, Ionescu and Frohman 2006, healthy men ages 20 to 40 received a single subcutaneous injection at either 60 or 90 mcg/kg (trial dose, not a recommendation, PMID 17018654).² Blood was sampled over a 12 hour overnight window, and the two doses produced no significant difference in response.²

The halted HIV trial ran on once-weekly dosing for 12 weeks followed by a 6 week follow-up (trial dose, not a recommendation, ConjuChem 8 August 2006 press release).⁵ The FDA review's account of the same study describes random assignment to one of three groups: a three week escalating low dose at 60, 90 and 120 mcg/kg (trial dose, not a recommendation, FDA PCAC briefing document, December 2024); a three week escalating high dose at 60, 120 and 240 mcg/kg (trial dose, not a recommendation, FDA PCAC briefing document, December 2024); or placebo. The groups were then to continue for nine further weeks (trial dose, not a recommendation, FDA PCAC briefing document, December 2024).⁹ That made it the longest human exposure on record, and it was stopped before it finished.

The halted HIV trial, and what is known about why

A separate Phase 2 efficacy and safety trial in patients was stopped. Registered as NCT00267527, it was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of CJC-1295 administered for 12 weeks (trial dose, not a recommendation, ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00267527) in HIV infected patients with HIV associated visceral obesity, sponsored by ConjuChem and started in December 2005.³ Its registry status is TERMINATED, the reason field is empty, and no results were ever posted.³

The reason it stopped is not in the registry but in the report from the sponsor and an FDA account of it. ConjuChem reported that a patient died at a clinical site in Argentina, and that it had terminated the study.⁵⁹ In the words of the company, the deceased patient received the eleventh weekly dose (trial dose, not a recommendation, ConjuChem 8 August 2006 press release), and about two hours later reported chest discomfort, an ECG confirmed an acute myocardial infarction, and death followed roughly one hour later.⁵

The causation matters, and the sources are careful about it. The company reported the most likely explanation from the attending physician as pre-existing asymptomatic coronary artery disease with plaque rupture and occlusion, and stated that there was no evidence of any cardiotoxic effects of the compound in previous preclinical or clinical studies.⁵ In other words the single death was reported as most likely not caused by the drug, and the sponsor terminated the study, which never published its data.⁵⁹ No source on this page establishes that CJC-1295 caused the death, and this page does not.

The enrollment figures do not agree, so here are all of them. The ClinicalTrials.gov registry records an enrollment count of 120,³ while both the ConjuChem press release and the FDA document state that 192 subjects were enrolled.⁵⁹ Two sources give 192 and one gives 120. This page reports the discrepancy rather than quietly picking a number.

Development did not resume. Those two 2006 healthy-adult trial papers (plus a 2009 paper on a subset of the Ionescu and Frohman 2006 participants, which did not discuss adverse events) and this terminated, never-reported Phase 2 trial are the entire human record for CJC-1295.¹²³⁵⁹

DAC versus no-DAC: the difference, and the evidence gap

What CJC-1295 actually is matters for reading any side-effect claim about it. It is a synthetic analogue of growth hormone releasing hormone with four amino-acid substitutions that increase its resistance to breakdown,⁶ chemically a tetrasubstituted form of hGRF(1-29) carrying a group that bonds to the Cys34 thiol of serum albumin to extend its time in the blood.⁸ That albumin-binding modification is the DAC, short for Drug Affinity Complex.⁵⁶

With the DAC, the estimated half-life is 5.8 to 8.1 days in healthy adults, reported elsewhere as about 8 days.¹²⁶ The unmodified releasing factor is short-lived, which is why the sponsor noted that its short half-life would otherwise require multiple daily injections.⁵ One caution the sources force: no direct human half-life has ever been measured for the no-DAC mod GRF 1-29 compound itself. The minutes-scale figure often quoted belongs to the related parent releasing factor, sermorelin (GRF 1-29), used as an extrapolation, so this page does not state a measured no-DAC human half-life.⁶

The evidence gap between the two versions is stark. Every human trial above used CJC-1295 with DAC. A 2026 review states that CJC-1295 without DAC remains essentially uncharacterised in the peer-reviewed human literature, with no controlled clinical studies directly evaluating it in humans, and grades it its lowest evidence tier.⁶ A PubMed check on 2026-09-29 found only two indexed human interventional trials of CJC-1295, both the DAC version.¹¹ The no-DAC form does show up in the illicit supply: a forensic laboratory identified seized powders containing modified GRF 1-29 alongside ipamorelin and other secretagogues, typically carrying an extra glycine at the N-terminus.¹⁰

The naming is worth keeping straight. CJC-1295 with DAC, the ConjuChem DAC:GRF, is the compound in all of the human trials; CJC-1295 without DAC, sold as mod GRF 1-29, is a different and essentially unstudied compound. The two are covered in depth in the CJC-1295 (with DAC) profile and the CJC-1295 (no-DAC) profile, where any minutes-scale half-life should be read as the sermorelin extrapolation described above, not a measurement; this guide stays on what the trials reported.

The CJC-1295 plus ipamorelin combination

The page title pairs CJC-1295 with ipamorelin because that is how the off-label market pairs them, but the pairing has no controlled human evidence behind it. No published human trial has tested the CJC-1295 plus ipamorelin combination, so there is no measured side-effect profile for the two together.¹² A 2026 review describes the combination as driven largely by anecdotal rationale, with controlled clinical evidence for synergy or meaningful body-composition change remaining limited, and notes that the ipamorelin pairing is usually discussed with the non-DAC form of CJC-1295.⁶

Ipamorelin on its own is described in that review as generally well tolerated, with no significant common adverse effects reported compared with growth hormone therapy, but with no long-term safety data and a human evidence base limited to Phase 1 studies and postoperative-ileus development.⁶ That is a tolerability description for one compound, not a safety clearance for the stack. The ipamorelin profile and the CJC-1295 with ipamorelin page cover the pairing itself. What belongs here is the plain fact that no trial has measured its side effects.

What is not known

Start with approval, because it frames the rest. No CJC-1295 product is approved: a 2026 review states that neither the DAC nor the no-DAC variant is approved as a therapeutic agent by major regulators such as the FDA and the EMA.⁶ Even the DAC version has no controlled efficacy data: the two human studies were pharmacology studies in healthy adults, graded at a middle evidence tier by that review, and the only efficacy trial was the HIV lipodystrophy study that was terminated and never reported results.⁶³⁹

There is no long-term human safety data. The FDA notes the available studies were small, short and conducted in healthy adults even though the compound was nominated to treat a chronic condition, and that there is no safety information for its use in children.⁹ The unresolved signals sit in animal and laboratory work. The FDA's 2024 briefing document reports that repeated daily subcutaneous injections for up to 14 days at doses of at least 0.25 mg/kg (animal study, rats and dogs, subcutaneous, FDA PCAC briefing document, December 2024) consistently produced injection-site hemorrhage, inflammation and necrosis in rats and dogs.⁹ The FDA also describes a genotoxicity signal for CJC-1295 with DAC, signs of DNA damage in cultured mouse pituitary cells and in vivo.⁹ And because no 2 year carcinogenicity study exists, while mice engineered to overexpress human GHRH develop pituitary hyperplasia and tumors, the FDA states the potential for pituitary hyperplasia and tumors cannot be ruled out; the 2026 review frames this as a theoretical oncologic concern with no established clinical carcinogenic signal.⁹⁶

Then there is the product itself. CJC-1295 is manufactured illicitly and has reached the public before completing clinical trials, and the no-DAC form has been found glycine-modified in seized doping material.⁷¹⁰ The FDA concluded that a balancing of its evaluation criteria weighs against adding any of the assessed CJC-1295 forms to the 503A Bulk Drug Substances List.⁹ For anyone injecting it, not knowing what is actually in the vial is a risk that sits on top of the thin safety record, not beside it.

Anti-doping status

CJC-1295 is banned in sport, without ambiguity. It is named on the 2026 WADA Prohibited List under section S2.2.4, growth hormone releasing factors, in the same line as CJC-1293, sermorelin and tesamorelin.⁴ That class sits under substances prohibited at all times, meaning in and out of competition, and the list took effect on 1 January 2026.⁴ Ipamorelin, the stack partner in the title, is on the same list as a growth hormone secretagogue.⁴ A peer-reviewed paper puts it the same way, calling CJC-1295 a prohibited substance under Section S2 of the WADA list.⁷

Where people get it, and the catch

The practical problem with sourcing it is not only the thin safety record above, but, given the illicit supply described in the previous sections, uncertainty about what is actually in a given vial.

For CJC-1295 with ipamorelin, this page links to our supply partner, Peptara Labs.

Disclosure: Some links on this page are referral links. Peptides Vietnam may earn a fee at no cost to you. Editorial content is never sold.

The short version

Every human study of CJC-1295 used the DAC version. Injection-site reactions were the most common adverse event, about 70 percent in the single-dose study, with headache, transient flushing and loose stools also reported, flushing reaching 100 percent after high-dose injections in the multiple-dose study, and both published studies reported no serious adverse reactions.
The individual frequencies are not in the trial abstracts. They come from a December 2024 FDA review that quotes the trials, so read them as CJC-1295 with DAC trial data as quoted by the FDA.
A Phase 2 HIV trial was terminated after one participant died of a heart attack that the attending physician judged most likely from pre-existing coronary disease, not the drug. It never published results, and enrollment is recorded as 120 in the registry but 192 by the sponsor and the FDA.
The no-DAC form, mod GRF 1-29, has no controlled human study, and neither does the CJC-1295 plus ipamorelin combination in this page title. No measured human half-life exists for the no-DAC form itself.
The studies were small and short, there is no long-term human safety data, and animal and laboratory work left unresolved signals: injection-site tissue damage in rats and dogs, a genotoxicity signal, and a carcinogenicity question the FDA could not rule out.
CJC-1295 and ipamorelin are both on the 2026 WADA Prohibited List, banned at all times. Every figure here is a study or regulatory figure, shown as evidence, never a dose to copy.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most common CJC-1295 side effects?+

In the published human trials, all of which used CJC-1295 with DAC, the most commonly reported adverse event was injection site reactions such as irritation, redness, induration, pain or itching, at about 70 percent of active subjects in Study 1, the single-dose study in Teichman 2006, and in every active subject in Study 2, the multiple-dose study, as quoted from those trials by the FDA in 2024. Mild injection-site redness also appeared in three of four placebo subjects (75 percent) in that multiple-dose study. Headache, transient flushing and warmth, loose stools or diarrhea, and a transient rash at the injection site were also reported; in the single-dose study all of these except the rash were more common at the higher doses; in the multiple-dose study headache was not dose related. The trials themselves reported no serious adverse reactions. The FDA counts 63 healthy adults dosed across three published papers, two trial papers covering three studies, plus a 2009 paper on a subset of the participants in the Ionescu and Frohman 2006 study, so these are small-study observations, not a personal side-effect prediction.

Did anyone die in a CJC-1295 trial?+

One participant died in the halted Phase 2 trial of CJC-1295 with DAC in HIV associated visceral obesity, run by ConjuChem. The sponsor reported that the patient received the eleventh weekly dose (trial dose, not a recommendation, ConjuChem 8 August 2006 press release) and about two hours later had an acute myocardial infarction, dying roughly an hour after that, and that the attending physician considered the most likely explanation to be pre-existing asymptomatic coronary artery disease with plaque rupture, not the drug. The company stated there was no evidence of cardiotoxic effects in previous studies. The trial was terminated and never published results, and no source establishes that CJC-1295 caused the death.

Does adding ipamorelin change CJC-1295 side effects?+

No controlled human trial has tested the CJC-1295 plus ipamorelin combination, so there is no measured side-effect profile for the pair. A 2026 review describes the combination as driven largely by anecdotal rationale, with controlled clinical evidence for synergy or body-composition benefit remaining limited. Ipamorelin on its own is described in that review as generally well tolerated, with no significant common adverse effects reported compared with growth hormone therapy, but with no long-term safety data and a human evidence base limited to Phase 1 and postoperative-ileus studies. The combination named in this page title is a community practice, not a studied regimen.

What is the difference between CJC-1295 with DAC and without DAC?+

The DAC, or Drug Affinity Complex, is a modification that lets the molecule bind to albumin in the blood. In their 2006 healthy-adult trials, Teichman et al. (PMID 16352683) estimated its half-life at 5.8 to 8.1 days. Every human trial of CJC-1295 used the DAC version. The no-DAC form, sold as mod GRF 1-29, is a different compound that a 2026 review calls essentially uncharacterised in the peer-reviewed human literature, with no controlled clinical studies in humans. No measured human half-life exists for the no-DAC form itself; the short, minutes-scale figure often quoted belongs to the related parent releasing factor, not to a direct measurement of the no-DAC compound.

Is CJC-1295 banned in sport?+

Yes. CJC-1295 is named on the 2026 WADA Prohibited List under section S2.2.4, growth hormone releasing factors, and substances in that class are prohibited at all times, both in and out of competition, with the list in force from 1 January 2026. Ipamorelin is on the same list as a growth hormone secretagogue. A peer-reviewed paper also states that CJC-1295 is considered a prohibited substance under Section S2 of the WADA list.

Sources and references

Every figure on this page traces to one of these sources, fetched on 2026-09-29. Numbers match the citation markers in the text.

1.PMID 16352683. J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 2006. Teichman et al. Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of GH-releasing hormone, in healthy adults. The primary human safety and pharmacology trial. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16352683
2.PMID 17018654. J Clin Endocrinol Metab, 2006. Ionescu and Frohman. Pulsatile secretion of growth hormone (GH) persists during continuous stimulation by CJC-1295, a long-acting GH-releasing hormone analog. The second human study. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17018654
3.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00267527. ConjuChem Phase 2 study of CJC-1295 in HIV infected patients with HIV associated visceral obesity. Overall status TERMINATED, reason field empty, enrollment count 120, no results posted. clinicaltrials.gov / NCT00267527
4.WADA 2026 Prohibited List, World Anti-Doping Code, date of entry into force 1 January 2026. Section S2.2.4, growth hormone releasing factors, names CJC-1295 and its analogues; ipamorelin is listed as a growth hormone secretagogue. wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list
5.ConjuChem Biotechnologies Inc. press release, 08 August 2006, findings of the DAC:GRF HIV lipodystrophy trial investigation, via the Wayback Machine archive of the natap.org mirror. Primary source on the death and the halt. web.archive.org / natap.org 2006
6.Open-access narrative review, 2026, full text (PMCID PMC13322892, PMID 42395176), fetched via the NCBI open-access API. The emerging landscape of performance-enhancing peptides modulating GH-IGF1 axis: bridging the gap between clinical evidence and patient self-administration. The DAC versus no-DAC comparison, evidence tiers, the EMA non-approval and the combination context are drawn from the full text, not the abstract. pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov / PMC13322892
7.PMID 21204297. Drug Test Anal, 2010. Henninge et al. Identification of CJC-1295, a growth-hormone-releasing peptide, in an unknown pharmaceutical preparation. WADA status and illicit-market context. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21204297
8.PMID 15817669. Endocrinology, 2005. Jette et al. Human growth hormone-releasing factor (hGRF)1-29-albumin bioconjugates activate the GRF receptor on the anterior pituitary in rats: identification of CJC-1295 as a long-lasting GRF analog. Rat and cell-culture developer study. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15817669
9.US FDA. Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee Briefing Document, December 2024, evaluation of five CJC-1295-related bulk drug substances for the 503A Bulk Drug Substances List. Quotes the human trial adverse events and the FDA safety review. fda.gov/media/183819/download
10.PMID 30136411. Drug Test Anal, 2019. Gajda et al. Glycine-modified growth hormone secretagogues identified in seized doping material. The no-DAC compound in the illicit supply. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30136411
11.NCBI PubMed search, run 2026-09-29 (query: CJC-1295 AND clinical trial[pt]). Returned only two indexed human interventional trials of CJC-1295, PMID 16352683 and PMID 17018654, both the DAC version. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov search, CJC-1295 clinical trials
12.NCBI PubMed literature search, run 2026-09-29. A review of the CJC-1295 record set (33 records) and the CJC-1295 AND clinical trial[pt] filter returned no controlled human trial of the CJC-1295 plus ipamorelin combination; the 2026 review separately describes the pairing as anecdotal practice with controlled evidence remaining limited. Recorded as a confirmed absence, not a tooling block. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov search, CJC-1295 plus ipamorelin combination