Bromantane dosage and evidence
Written by Aaron CuhaReviewed Sep 2026
The short answer
Bromantane is a Russian drug sold in the West as a focus pill.
Evidence grade for Bromantane: Moderate. The rule: at least one finished study in people, and at least 100 people who took it. The sum on this page: 3 completed trials, 728 people given it. A grade counts how much has been done to people, not whether it works.
- People given it
- 728
- Human studies
- 3
- Found nothing
- 1
Dose
No human dose established
Amounts that were given in studies sit in Human evidence on this page. None of them is a personal dose.
3 completed trials, 728 people given it
6 effects reported, 4 unwanted, 2 wanted, by people using it, not a trial
Goal pages: Brain, memory and mood, Sleep
In plain English
In plain English, from Aaron
This is how I would explain it to a friend. The evidence, with the numbers, is further down the page.
Bromantane is a Russian drug. In Russia it is sold as Ladasten for feeling worn out. In the West it is sold online as a focus pill. It is not a peptide. It is banned for tested athletes during competition.
What people take it for
- More drive and energy.
- Calm focus without the jitters of a strong stimulant.
- Less anxiety.
What studies in people showed
The biggest study had 728 patients at 28 Russian clinics. They took 50 to 100 mg a day for 28 days. Doctors rated 90.8 percent of them better. But there was no dummy pill group, and everyone knew they were on the drug. Smaller studies did use a dummy pill. They found the drug helped tiredness more than the dummy. They do not say how many people took part or how big the help was. One found that the people who felt the drug most also felt the dummy most. All of it comes from one Moscow group. Not one study tested memory or focus.
What people report
Reports, not study results
The good
- People describe a calm lift in mood and drive, with less anxiety.
- It comes on slowly, about two hours after a dose of around 50 to 100 mg.
The bad
- The effect often fades fast. People describe a strong first day or two and nothing by day three.
- Taking more does not bring it back, by most accounts.
- Many say it felt too weak to be worth it next to prescription stimulants.
- Trouble sleeping and feeling overstimulated come up. People also doubt what is really in the capsule.
Where these come from: The good and bad lines are forum patterns from LongeCity and Bluelight threads shown on this page. They are not from a study. The study numbers are from the Russian studies on this page.
My bottom line
The studies are about feeling worn out, not about thinking. Most users say it fades within days. If you compete in a tested sport, it is banned. If you feel wiped out all the time, start with blood work, not a Russian pill.
An opinion, not a finding. I am a coach, not a doctor.
What it has been measured to do
Measured in people
Goals Bromantane has been tested for in people, biggest studies first. We count only what the studies on this page say, so the real numbers may be higher.
- Energy and fatigue728 people · 1 study
- Memory and thinkingno headcount stated · 1 study · 1 found nothing
What people using it report
Real people telling you what happened to them. Nobody checked it, and the people who post are not a fair sample, so it cannot prove anything works. It is still the best guide on this page to what people actually do with Bromantane, what they expect, and what goes wrong. The full account, including the negative reports, is below.
32 of the 36 indexed goals have no study of any kind behind Bromantane
No study in people, animals or cells on this page reports a result for these. That does not prove Bromantane does nothing for them. It does mean anything you have heard about Bromantane and one of these did not come from a study cited here.
Show full evidence
What is Bromantane?
Bromantane is a Russian drug sold in the West as a focus pill. It does have human studies that compared it with a dummy pill. But every one of them scored tiredness and anxiety in people with long-term exhaustion, not thinking. Almost all of the work is small, in Russian, and from one Moscow research group. Tested athletes are banned from using it in competition under the 2026 World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) list.
Bromantane is the one in this group that people actually search for and buy. It is also the hardest to look up in English. Its human studies are filed under other names, and almost all of them are in Russian.
In Russia it is sold as ladasten, and the medical studies use that name. Papers about doping call it bromantan or bromontan. Search all of those names and you find 74 records.
The biggest study had 728 patients at 28 Russian clinics. Everyone got the drug and everyone knew it. There was no dummy-pill group. The score was a doctor's overall impression of how the patient was doing. Tiredness is exactly where dummy pills work best, so that big number tells you less than it seems.
There are smaller studies that did use a dummy pill. One ran for 28 days in people with long-term exhaustion, which Russian doctors call neurasthenia. Two more looked at how patients rated themselves, sorted by their brain wave pattern. The published summaries give no patient counts and do not say how big the effect was. All of them come from the same Moscow group. No trial is registered. A search of ClinicalTrials.gov, the US trial registry, finds none.
Nobody has measured how long it stays in human blood. Nobody has scanned a human brain on it. And no study, with or without a dummy pill, has ever tested thinking.
How does Bromantane work?
Shown in rats, only guessed at in people. Bromantane is not a peptide. It is built on adamantane, a small cage-shaped molecule. Russian doctors class it as an 'actoprotector', a drug meant to help you cope with strain, not as a stimulant. In rats, one dose by mouth changed how much dopamine, the brain's drive and reward chemical, several brain areas were set up to make. In slices of rat brain, it made a short boost in the links between nerve cells last much longer. Blocking protein building, or blocking two dopamine receptors, stopped or weakened that. The idea that it raises your ability to make dopamine, instead of forcing it out the way amphetamine does, rests only on that rat work. Nobody has measured dopamine in a person taking bromantane.
What have studies in people found about Bromantane?
There are real human studies with a dummy-pill comparison. All of them scored tiredness and anxiety in Russian outpatients with long-term exhaustion. Not one tested thinking.
- Biggest study: 728 patients at 28 Russian clinics took 50 to 100 mg a day for 28 days. Doctors rated 76.0% improved on one overall scale and 90.8% on another. 3% had side effects and 0.8% quit. Everyone got the drug. There was no dummy-pill group.
- A study against a dummy pill in people with long-term exhaustion: 28 days on the drug or the dummy, then a final week where everyone got the dummy. The authors say the drug beat the dummy on tiredness symptoms. The summary gives no patient count and does not say how big the effect was.
- Two more dummy-pill reports looked at how patients rated themselves. The people who felt the most benefit from bromantane also felt the most benefit from the dummy (PMID 22834121, PMID 22288153).
- A controlled report in people with Parkinson's disease, on problems other than movement (PMID 21434470), and a report in irritable bowel syndrome (PMID 21434378).
- An early pilot trial from 2006 (PMID 16995430).
- No trial is registered. A ClinicalTrials.gov search for bromantane finds none.
What this does not tell you: Three problems, and any one of them would be enough. First, what was measured: tiredness, anxiety or a doctor's overall impression. Never memory, attention, speed or planning. Second, who did it: nearly all of the controlled work comes from one Moscow group, in Russian, in journals few people outside Russia read. No one in another country has repeated it. Third, the big number: the 728-patient study had no comparison group, and its 90.8% figure is a doctor's overall impression in a condition where hope alone moves that score the most. There is no study of how the body handles the drug, no brain scan study, and no head to head test against any other drug.
What do people who took Bromantane 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.
- What people describe is a calm stimulation rather than a sharp one, with lifted mood and reduced anxiety, and a slow onset commonly put at around two hours after an amount in the region of 50 to 100 mg.
- Rapid tolerance is the dominant theme and the main reason people stop. Accounts of a strong first day or two followed by nothing at all by the third day are common, and at least one detailed account describes doubling and then greatly exceeding the original amount with nothing returning.
- Attempts to restore the effect with other supplements, across dopaminergic, cholinergic, serotonergic and GABAergic routes, are described as failing. No reason for the collapse is agreed on, and the question is often left unanswered in the thread where it is asked.
- The usual response described is to cycle it, either a few days on and a few days off or a fortnight followed by a long break. Those schedules come from forum convention, not from anything published that these posters can point to.
- Disappointment relative to expectation recurs. People compare it unfavourably with prescription stimulants and with other wakefulness agents, and describe the effect as too slight to be worth regular use.
- Side effect reports are thin beyond insomnia and overstimulation, and posters note that most of the safety framing in circulation traces back to the manufacturer rather than to independent work. Availability and doubts about what is actually in the capsule come up often.
Sources: Brain Health and Nootropic Stacks threads on LongeCity and misc threads on Bluelight, found by site-restricted search and read directly, September 2026. Nothing above is attributed to any specific post and no post is reproduced.
The state of the research
Bromantane is an odd case. It deserves a fair description, not a brush-off and not a sales pitch.
The brush-off is wrong. English-language nootropic writing often says it has no human evidence. That is false. It has studies against a dummy pill where patients did not know which they got, and one series far bigger than most grey-market compounds ever get. Anyone who says the evidence does not exist searched for bromantane and not for ladasten.
The sales pitch is wrong too, and it works by mixing up two studies. The big number, 728 patients, comes from the study with no comparison group. The careful design, with a dummy pill, comes from studies that give no numbers. Ads tend to borrow the size of one and the design of the other.
The deeper problem is what was measured. Everything here is about feeling worn out: tiredness, anxiety, a doctor's overall impression. Those are fair things to measure for a drug sold in Russia to treat exhaustion. They say nothing about thinking, and in the West bromantane is sold to sharpen thinking. The studies that would settle that have not been done.
A real test of thinking means a proper test of memory, attention, speed or planning. You take it before and after, and you are compared with a group who got a dummy and did not know it. None of the seven compounds in this group has ever been tested that way. Scores for tiredness, anxiety, hunger or a doctor's overall impression are not thinking tests. Neither is a hormone level. This matters because several of these compounds are sold for focus, clarity and mental energy, and the studies behind them measured none of those things.
The drug testing point is separate, and you can check it. Bromantan is named on the 2026 WADA banned list, in the stimulant group S6.A. That group is banned during competition, not all the time. Drugs in S6.A carry harsher penalties than the stimulants in S6.B. Any tested athlete taking it is risking a ban.
The evidence, in charts
Fig. 1a · how many people
728people, across 1 study in people cited here
| Study | People | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii Imeni S.S. Korsakova 2010 | 728 | 100% |
The whole total is one study of 728. Counts are the number of people each study on this page says it signed up. That includes studies that only watched people and gave nobody the compound. 2 more studies in people give no headcount and are not counted here. Studies still signing people up are left out, and only studies cited on this page are counted.
Fig. 1b · evidence mix
3 of 6 sources here are studies in people. The rest are not.
- Study in people · done in people350%
- Animal study · done in animals233%
- Review of studies · sums up other studies117%
Counted from the list of sources on this page. It counts only what we cite, so there may be more studies out there. A review counts once, however many studies it sums up.
Fig. 2 · evidence over time
The studies cover 6 different years, 1997 to 2012, counted from the list of sources on this page. The newest source on file is from 2012, more than five years ago. Research on it may have gone quiet.
Fig. 3 · legal status at a glance
US
Not approved
UK
Not approved
AU
Not approved
CA
Not approved
Not approved in any of the four countries shown. This is what the law says, not a verdict on the science. See Legal status below for the full text and any notes.
Fig. 4 · how much does what
Nobody has tested different amounts in people
This chart would show how the effect changes as the amount goes up. For this compound, nobody has measured that in people. So we leave it empty. We will not borrow an animal chart and pretend it works the same in people.
Fig. 5 · what the molecule is
- Kind of compound
- Small molecule
- Molecule weight
- 306.2 Da (C16H20BrN). An adamantane derivative, not a peptide.
- Half-life
- Stated in words, not a numbersee the exact wording below
- Chain length
- None on file
Half-life as stated on file: No published human pharmacokinetic study was located in this pass. Claims of a long duration of action circulate widely and none of them traces to a measured human plasma curve.
No amino acid sequence is on file for Bromantane, which is expected: a small molecule is not built from amino acids.
The studies we cite
- Study in people2009Ladasten, the new drug with psychostimulant and anxiolytic actions in treatment of neurasthenia (results of the comparative clinical study with placebo)
This is the best human evidence bromantane has, and it is thinner than it sounds. People with long-term exhaustion took the drug or a dummy pill for four weeks, then everyone took the dummy for a final week. The authors say it beat the dummy on the main symptoms, and that nobody suffered on stopping. The published summary gives no number of patients and no measure of how big the effect was. What was rated was tiredness, not thinking. The paper is in Russian.
The core randomised placebo-controlled record, and the strongest human evidence bromantane has. A randomised blind study in neurasthenia with a wash-out period, 28 days of monotherapy against placebo, and a final week of placebo in all patients. The authors report that ladasten was superior to placebo in the rate and degree of reduction of the main symptoms of asthenic syndrome, and that no withdrawal syndrome appeared after discontinuation. The abstract gives no sample size, no effect size and no p value, and the endpoints are asthenia rating scales, not cognitive tests. Russian language.
- Study in people2010Treatment of asthenic disorders in patients with psychoautonomic syndrome: results of a multicenter study on efficacy and safety of ladasten
The largest study of bromantane had nothing to compare itself against. 728 patients at 28 Russian clinics took it for four weeks. Nine in ten were rated improved by their doctor. Side effects were rare and almost nobody quit. Here is the problem. Everybody got the drug, everybody knew it, and the score was a doctor's overall impression. Exhaustion is the condition where dummy treatments perform best, so a nine in ten success rate in this design tells you very little.
The largest human dataset: 28 Russian clinical centres, analysis on 728 patients with psychoautonomic syndrome and asthenic disorders, 50 to 100 mg per day for 28 days. Responder rates 76.0% on CGI-S and 90.8% on CGI-I, adverse effects in 3%, discontinuation in 0.8%. There is no placebo arm. A 90.8% response rate on an open-label clinician global impression scale in a fatigue syndrome is close to uninterpretable, because that is the exact design in which placebo response peaks. The same study is also indexed at PMID 20559263.
- Study in people2012Ladasten versus placebo effect self-evaluated by neurasthenia patients with different EEG alpha rhythm types
The same Moscow group found something awkward and published it anyway. Among patients with exhaustion, the ones who felt the biggest benefit from bromantane were the same ones who felt the biggest benefit from a dummy. Their brain wave pattern and their emotional style predicted both responses. That is a warning about who reports feeling better, and about how much of the improvement belongs to the drug at all.
A randomised controlled report from the same Moscow group, and a candid one. It finds that in neurasthenia patients with reduced EEG alpha activity, emotional lability and inertness, the subjective response to ladasten AND to placebo was both larger and higher rated than in patients with prominent alpha rhythm and sthenic traits. In other words, the patient subgroup that responds most strongly to the drug is the same subgroup that responds most strongly to placebo.
- Review of studies1997Bromontan, a new doping agent
A 1997 letter in The Lancet about bromantan turning up as a doping drug after the 1996 Olympics. That is where its ban in sport began. It is still banned in competition on the 2026 WADA list.
A 1997 Lancet letter recording the compound's emergence as a doping agent after the 1996 Olympics. This is the origin of its anti-doping status. It remains prohibited: the 2026 WADA Prohibited List names bromantan under S6.A, non-specified stimulants, prohibited in-competition.
- Animal study2007The effects of ladasten on dopaminergic neurotransmission and hippocampal synaptic plasticity in rats
In rats. One dose by mouth changed the dopamine-making machinery in five brain areas. In slices of rat brain, it made a short boost in the links between nerve cells last much longer. The whole dopamine story told about bromantane rests on this rat study.
Rats, not humans. A single oral 50 mg/kg dose differentially regulated tyrosine hydroxylase messenger RNA and protein and dopamine and L-DOPA content across five brain regions, and in hippocampal slices 10 micromolar ladasten converted short-term potentiation into a long-lasting form, blocked by anisomycin and attenuated by SCH23390. This is the entire mechanistic basis for the dopamine story told about this compound, and it is a rat study.
- Animal study2002Toxic effect of single treatment with bromantane on neurological status of experimental animals
In lab animals. A single dose had a toxic effect on the nervous system. Along with a separate study of male rat fertility, this is all the published safety work beyond the Russian patient series, and it is all in animals.
A toxicity study in experimental animals reporting a toxic effect of a single treatment on neurological status. Paired with a separate report of an effect on reproductive function in male rats (PMID 16047676), this is the indexed safety literature, and it is animal. No human safety dataset beyond the uncontrolled Russian clinical series exists.
Common questions
Has Bromantane been tested in people?
Yes. 728 people given it across 3 completed trials cited here, 1 of which found nothing. Bromantane is a Russian drug sold in the West as a focus pill.
What is the Bromantane dosage?
No human dose established. Amounts that were given in studies sit in Human evidence on this page. None of them is a personal dose. 3 completed trials, 728 people given it
Is Bromantane FDA-approved?
Not approved by the FDA for any use, and no FDA label exists. It is registered and sold in Russia under the name Ladasten, for asthenia, a condition of lasting weakness and tiredness. In the United States and elsewhere it is sold as a research chemical or as an unapproved brain-boosting supplement.
Does bromantane actually have clinical trials, or is that marketing?
It has them. There is a 28-day study against a dummy pill in people with long-term exhaustion, where patients did not know which they got. There are two more dummy-pill reports. And there is a 28-clinic series of 728 patients with no comparison group. That is more human data than almost anything else sold as a nootropic. But none of it is about thinking, because none of those studies tested thinking.
Why can I not find the studies on PubMed?
You are searching the wrong name. The medical studies are filed under ladasten, its Russian brand name. Doping papers use bromantan or bromontan. Search bromantane alone and you miss most of it. Search all four names together and you get 74 records.
Will bromantane make me fail a drug test?
If you are an athlete tested under WADA rules, yes, during competition. Bromantan is on the 2026 WADA banned list in group S6.A, stimulants. S6 drugs are banned during competition, not all the time. S6.A drugs carry the stiffer penalties. This is not a grey area and it is not old news. It is on the current list.
Is it safe?
Nobody can answer that well. The human safety numbers come from Russian series with no comparison group. About 3% of patients had side effects and 0.8% quit over 28 days. That is reassuring as far as it goes, and it goes about a month. In lab animals, one study found a toxic effect on the nervous system after a single dose. Another found an effect on fertility in male rats. There is no long-term human safety data. Nobody has studied how it is handled in the human body, so nobody knows what builds up with daily use.
How does it compare to modafinil or a racetam?
No study has put them side by side, so any comparison is someone's opinion, not a result. What we can say: bromantane's human studies are in people with long-term exhaustion. Its dopamine story comes from rats. And its controlled studies scored symptoms, not how well people did on tests.
Is the 728-patient study good evidence?
It is good evidence that people put up with the drug. It is weak evidence that the drug works, for one reason: there was no dummy-pill group. Its headline is 90.8% of patients rated improved by their doctor, in a tiredness disorder, with everyone knowing they were on the drug. No setup inflates results from hope more than that one. The studies in this program that did use a dummy pill were much smaller and do not say how big the effect was.