AICAR dosage and evidence

What is AICAR?

How does AICAR work?

Inside cells it turns into ZMP, which looks like a low-energy signal and switches on AMPK. That turns on genes linked to endurance.

What do people who took AICAR report?

This is what real people say happened to them, good and bad. Nobody measured it. A report cannot tell a real effect from the lift people get just from expecting it to work, from a diet or training change made at the same time, or from what was really in the vial. We still put it near the top. It is the next best thing to a study in people: what happens when real people use it, including what goes wrong.

• The dominant theme is the gap between the amounts used in the animal work people cite and the amounts anyone actually injects. Human equivalent figures in the grams per day are set against vials sold in tens of milligrams, and several posters conclude from that gap alone that the compound is not practical outside a laboratory.
• Doses described are roughly 10 to 50 mg, often every other day, on runs of around eight weeks. People say openly that daily use would be preferable and that they cannot afford it.
• Cost is the most common reason described for stopping. A vial lasting about a week at doses people consider worth using, and cycle totals running into four figures, come up repeatedly.
• The one detailed self-report in this sample is a runner tracking race times over a short period. The changes described are small, and the same person attributed larger past improvements to a steroid and was taking a PPAR agonist at the same time, so nothing in the log isolates this compound.
• Problems described are practical, and in the gut, with frequent bowel movements and dehydration attributed to the combination being run, and both compounds avoided before competition for that reason.
• In absolute terms there is very little human experience here. Most of what is written about it in these threads is extrapolation from rodent studies, which the posters themselves generally acknowledge.

Sources: An EliteFitness endurance log and related training threads, plus MESO-Rx dosing discussion read through site-restricted search results, September 2026. Nothing above is attributed to any specific post and no post is reproduced.

The evidence, in charts

The studies we cite

• Study in people2012
  Effect of adenosine-regulating agent acadesine on morbidity and mortality associated with coronary artery bypass grafting: the RED-CABG randomized controlled trial

  It was tested properly, in thousands of patients, and it did not work. 3,080 people having heart bypass surgery got acadesine or a dummy at 300 hospitals. The trial was stopped early because it was going nowhere. Death, stroke or serious heart weakness hit about one in twenty people in each group. An earlier pooling of five small trials had looked good. This trial is why the drug went no further.

  3,080 patients randomised at 300 sites before the trial was stopped for futility. The composite of death, non-fatal stroke or severe left ventricular dysfunction through day 28 occurred in 5.1% on acadesine against 5.0% on placebo (odds ratio 1.01). An earlier 1997 meta-analysis of five smaller trials had been positive; this trial is why the drug went no further.

  PMID 22782417 JAMA
• Animal study2008
  AMPK and PPARdelta agonists are exercise mimetics

  In mice. It raised endurance in mice that did not train by about 44%.

  AICAR raised endurance in untrained mice by about 44%.

  PMID 18674809 Cell