Kisspeptin-10 dosage and evidence

What is Kisspeptin-10?

How does Kisspeptin-10 work?

It switches on kisspeptin receptors on the brain cells that make GnRH. Those cells then release the body's own GnRH, which drives the other sex hormones.

What have studies in people found about Kisspeptin-10?

Kisspeptin-10 has been given to people in body chemistry experiments, not treatment trials. The studies are small, usually under 30 people. They measure hormone release over minutes to a day. None of them treats a condition or follows anyone after the study visit.

• Women across the cycle: 31 women got a dose into a vein at different points in their cycle, 0.24 nmol/kg for most and 0.72 nmol/kg for 4 of them. Hormone pulses followed in every woman in the second half of her cycle or near ovulation. Only half of those early in their cycle responded, and tripling the dose did not help them.
• Irisin: 8 lean men and 8 men with obesity each got one dose, with blood drawn for 210 minutes. A muscle-related protein called irisin rose in both groups. In men with obesity it went from 41.28 to 75.76 ng/mL at 180 minutes. In lean men it reached 96.24 ng/mL at 210 minutes. This was one dose, and the summary describes no dummy group.
• A puberty that never started: 11 people born without the hormone signal that starts puberty (9 men and 2 women), plus 1 man whose condition had corrected itself, each got one dose into a vein. Nobody with the ongoing condition made the expected response in LH, a hormone that drives the testes and ovaries. The man whose condition had corrected responded strongly. That is a clear negative result, and a useful one: kisspeptin cannot switch on a hormone network that never came online.
• Healthy men (already cited on this page): one dose into a vein tripled LH within 30 minutes. A 22.5-hour drip raised LH and testosterone and made LH pulses more frequent.
• Men and women differ: with 4 to 5 people per dose group, men's LH and FSH (another reproductive hormone) rose after a dose into a vein as low as 0.3 and 1.0 nmol/kg. Women early in their cycle showed no change, even at 10 nmol/kg into a vein, 32 nmol/kg under the skin, or a drip of 720 pmol/kg a minute. Women near ovulation did respond, to a 10 nmol/kg dose. The same peptide at the same dose does different things depending on who gets it and when.
• Three of the four studies already on this page used kisspeptin-54, a longer and different peptide, and are labelled that way there.

What this does not tell you: No controlled trial of repeated kisspeptin-10 dosing exists in anyone. Every result above is a short hormone measure lasting minutes to 22.5 hours. Nothing has measured fertility, sperm, sex drive, mood or body make-up as a result. The data in women show the response depends on where they are in their cycle, so there is no single number for the effect. And every dose was given into a vein or under the skin by researchers. So the record cannot tell you what happens when people inject it themselves.

What do people who took Kisspeptin-10 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 question people arrive with is almost always whether it can stand in for hCG while on testosterone replacement, usually because hCG became unavailable or unaffordable to them. The answer they get from more experienced posters and moderators is consistently that it cannot, on the grounds that it acts higher up the same chain. So the shut down caused by the testosterone they are taking blocks it too.
• Doses people describe are around 100 mcg as a shot under the skin, sometimes raised slowly toward 150 mcg, on intermittent schedules such as three days a week. Daily dosing is specifically avoided in most accounts, with tachyphylaxis given as the reason, and the disagreement about whether that concern is warranted runs through the threads.
• What people report noticing is modest and hard for them to attribute. Libido and mood changes come up, and nocturnal erections are described by some as changing in a dose-related way, but the same posters usually note they were adjusting other hormones at the same time and say plainly that they cannot separate the two.
• No-effect reports are present and specific. Someone running it for a month and seeing no movement in luteinising hormone or total testosterone is a pattern rather than an outlier, and testicular size, which is the outcome several people say they actually wanted, is repeatedly described as not changing over months.
• Testicular aching and tightness resolving within a few weeks is one of the more consistent things reported, and it is notably not the outcome most of these users were after.
• Side effect reports are close to absent in this discussion, which in a peptide used at low doses and short exposure is an absence of complaints rather than a safety finding.
• Sourcing is a live problem. It cannot be compounded by United States pharmacies, so everything discussed comes from research chemical suppliers, and purity and sterility uncertainty is raised repeatedly as the reason some people will not touch it.

Sources: Multiple ExcelMale threads on kisspeptin, kisspeptin dosing and kisspeptin as an hCG substitute, 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

The evidence, in charts

The studies we cite

• Study in people2011
  Kisspeptin-10 is a potent stimulator of LH and increases pulse frequency in men

  Kisspeptin-10 switches on the hormone system that drives testosterone. Healthy men were given a single injection into a vein, and the pituitary hormone that tells the testes to work tripled within half an hour. A longer drip lasting most of a day raised that hormone and testosterone, and made the natural pulses come more often. These are blood measurements over hours. Nobody was followed to see whether fertility, mood, muscle or anything else changed.

  IV bolus kisspeptin-10 tripled LH in healthy men within 30 minutes; a 22.5-hour infusion raised LH and testosterone and increased LH pulse frequency.

  PMID 21632807 Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism
• Study in people2005
  Kisspeptin-54 stimulates the hypothalamic-pituitary gonadal axis in human males

  This study used kisspeptin-54, which is a different molecule from the kisspeptin-10 people buy. It was the first time any kisspeptin was given to humans. Six men received a 90 minute drip, and the two pituitary hormones that drive the testes went up, and so did testosterone. Six men is a very small group, everybody got the drug, and the measurements are hormones in blood over an hour and a half. Nothing here transfers automatically to kisspeptin-10.

  Kisspeptin-54, not kisspeptin-10. First human kisspeptin study: a 90-minute infusion significantly raised LH, FSH and testosterone in six men.

  PMID 16174713 Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism
• Study in people2014
  Kisspeptin-54 triggers egg maturation in women undergoing in vitro fertilization

  This is kisspeptin-54, not the kisspeptin-10 sold online. Fifty-three women going through fertility treatment were given one injection to trigger their eggs to mature, in place of the usual trigger drug. It worked, because the hormone surge happened and eggs matured, and 92 out of every 100 women went on to an embryo transfer. Everybody got the drug, so there was nothing to compare against. It also says nothing about what kisspeptin-10 does in men.

  Kisspeptin-54, not kisspeptin-10. A single kisspeptin-54 injection induced an LH surge and egg maturation in 53 IVF patients, with embryo transfer in 92%.

  PMID 25036713 Journal of Clinical Investigation
• Study in people2017
  Kisspeptin modulates sexual and emotional brain processing in humans

  Kisspeptin-54 changed how men's brains responded to sexual and romantic images, and lifted low mood slightly. Twenty-nine healthy men were scanned after receiving the peptide or a dummy. Emotional areas of the brain reacted more strongly to the images on the peptide. This is a brain scan signal and a mood questionnaire, not a change in anybody's sex life or relationship. It also used kisspeptin-54, which is not the kisspeptin-10 sold as a research chemical.

  Kisspeptin-54, not kisspeptin-10. In 29 healthy men, kisspeptin-54 enhanced limbic responses to sexual and couple-bonding images and reduced negative mood versus vehicle.

  PMID 28112678 Journal of Clinical Investigation
• Study in people2011
  The effects of kisspeptin-10 on reproductive hormone release show sexual dimorphism in humans

  The same dose of kisspeptin-10 does completely different things in men and women. In men, a single injection raised the hormones that drive the testes at very low doses. In women in the first half of their cycle, nothing happened, even at much higher doses given three different ways. In women close to ovulation, the hormones did rise. Only four or five people were tested at each dose. There is no single number for what this peptide does.

  4 to 5 subjects per group: LH and FSH rose in men from 0.3 and 1.0 nmol/kg intravenously, but women in the follicular phase showed no gonadotropin change at up to 10 nmol/kg intravenously, 32 nmol/kg subcutaneously or 720 pmol/kg per minute by infusion. Preovulatory women did respond.

  PMID 21976724 Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism
• Study in people2012
  Kisspeptin administration to women: a window into endogenous kisspeptin secretion and GnRH responsiveness across the menstrual cycle

  Where a woman is in her cycle decides whether kisspeptin-10 does anything. Thirty one women were given it into a vein and their hormone pulses were tracked. Every woman in the second half of her cycle or close to ovulation responded. Only half of those early in their cycle did, and giving three times the dose did not help them. This was an experiment about how the system works. Nobody was treated for anything.

  31 women dosed at 0.24 or 0.72 nmol/kg intravenously: LH pulses followed kisspeptin in all luteal and preovulatory women but in only half of those in the early follicular phase, and the higher dose did not improve the response.

  PMID 22577171 Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism
• Study in people2014
  Exogenous kisspeptin administration as a probe of GnRH neuronal function in patients with idiopathic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism

  Kisspeptin-10 could not restart a reproductive system that never switched on. Eleven people born without the hormone signal that drives puberty were each given a single injection into a vein. Not one of them produced the expected hormone response. A twelfth man, whose condition had corrected itself earlier in life, responded strongly. This is a clean negative result and a useful one. The peptide needs a working nerve circuit downstream, and it cannot supply one.

  11 subjects with congenital idiopathic hypogonadotropic hypogonadism plus 1 whose disease had reversed: every subject with abiding disease failed to produce an LH response to 0.24 nmol/kg kisspeptin, while the reversal subject responded.

  PMID 25226293 Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism
• Study in people2019
  CHANGES IN IRISIN RELEASE IN RESPONSE TO PERIPHERAL KISSPEPTIN-10 ADMINISTRATION IN HEALTHY AND OBESE ADULT MEN

  This measured a blood marker for a few hours and nothing else. Eight lean men and eight men with obesity were each given one kisspeptin-10 injection, then had blood drawn for three and a half hours. A muscle-related protein called irisin rose in both groups, roughly doubling in the men with obesity. The published summary describes no dummy injection for comparison. Nobody was followed afterwards, and nothing anyone would feel was measured.

  8 normal weight and 8 obese men given a single kisspeptin-10 injection with sampling to 210 minutes: plasma irisin rose in both groups, from 41.28 to 75.76 ng/mL in the obese group. No placebo arm is described in the abstract.

  PMID 32010344 Acta Endocrinologica (Bucharest)