Pterostilbene dosage and evidence
Written by Aaron CuhaReviewed Sep 2026
The short answer
One study in people: 80 adults with high cholesterol. At 250 mg a day, it lowered the top blood pressure number by 7.8 points. In the same people, it raised LDL, the bad cholesterol, by 17.1 mg/dL. No human study has measured anything to do with ageing.
Evidence grade for Pterostilbene: Limited. The rule: people have taken it in a published study, but fewer than 100 of them. The sum on this page: 1 completed trial, 80 people given it. A grade counts how much has been done to people, not whether it works.
- People given it
- 80
- Human studies
- 1
- Found nothing
- 0
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.
1 completed trial, 80 people given it
4 effects reported, 2 unwanted, 2 wanted, by people using it, not a trial
Goal pages: Fat loss and metabolism, Brain, memory and mood, Ageing and longevity, Heart and circulation, Gut health
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.
Pterostilbene is a close cousin of resveratrol. It is sold as a better-absorbed resveratrol for long life. It is a supplement.
What people take it for
- Living longer.
- A better-absorbed version of resveratrol.
- Lower blood pressure.
What studies in people showed
There is one study in people, with 80 adults who had high cholesterol. On the top dose, blood pressure fell by 7.8 points. But LDL, the bad cholesterol, went up by 17.1 mg/dL. Adding grape extract stopped that rise. No study has looked at ageing in people. Now the rats. In rats, about 80 percent of a dose got into the body, against 20 percent for resveratrol.
What people report
Reports, not study results
The good
- Blood pressure dropped on the top dose in the one study.
- No liver, kidney or blood sugar problems showed up at up to 250 mg a day.
The bad
- Bad cholesterol went up in the same people whose blood pressure went down.
- It has only been tested in 80 people, for six to eight weeks.
- We have not collected user reports on this one yet.
Where these come from: The one human study on this page and its safety report. We have no forum reports on this one.
My bottom line
If you take it, get a lipid panel before and after. Raising your LDL to lower your blood pressure is not a trade I would make blind.
An opinion, not a finding. I am a coach, not a doctor.
What it has been measured to do
Measured in people
Goals Pterostilbene 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.
- Cholesterol and blood fats80 people · 1 study
- Blood pressure80 people · 1 study
- Liver fat and liver health80 people · 1 study
- Kidney function80 people · 1 study
Animal and lab work, not yet tested in people
Real results, but from animals or cells, not people. What works in a mouse often does not work the same way in a person. Nobody can patent this, so nobody would ever earn back the cost of a study in people. That is usually why there is none. The record on this one is set out below.
- Memory and thinking1 animal or lab study
- Living longer1 animal or lab study
30 of the 36 indexed goals have no study of any kind behind Pterostilbene
No study in people, animals or cells on this page reports a result for these. That does not prove Pterostilbene does nothing for them. It does mean anything you have heard about Pterostilbene and one of these did not come from a study cited here.
Show full evidence
What is Pterostilbene?
One study in people: 80 adults with high cholesterol. At 250 mg a day, it lowered the top blood pressure number by 7.8 points. In the same people, it raised LDL, the bad cholesterol, by 17.1 mg/dL. No human study has measured anything to do with ageing.
Pterostilbene is sold as a better resveratrol. On one narrow measure, that claim holds up. In rats given the same amount by mouth, about 20 percent of resveratrol got into the body, against about 80 percent of pterostilbene. That is because a small chemical change slows how fast the liver breaks it down.
That is a fact about rats, and it is where the case rests. The human evidence is one study of 80 adults with high cholesterol, meaning total cholesterol of at least 200 mg/dL or LDL of at least 100 mg/dL. People were split into four groups, one of them on a dummy pill, for six to eight weeks. It measured blood fats, blood pressure and weight.
It found two things. On the high dose, the top blood pressure number fell 7.8 points and the bottom number 7.3. That is a real effect, about the size of a low dose of a blood pressure drug. And LDL cholesterol rose 17.1 mg/dL on pterostilbene alone. That rise did not happen when it was mixed with grape extract, and it was smaller in people already on a cholesterol drug. The authors' own one-line conclusion is that pterostilbene raises LDL and lowers blood pressure in adults.
A separate safety report from the same study found no warning signs for the liver, kidneys or blood sugar at up to 250 mg a day. It concluded the compound is generally safe in people at that dose. Safe and helpful are different findings. Only one of them was shown.
How does Pterostilbene work?
It is resveratrol with a small chemical change: two of its three reactive groups are capped. That makes it more fat-soluble and much harder for the liver to break down and clear. That is the whole absorption argument for it. The benefits claimed for it are the same list claimed for resveratrol: turning on SIRT1, AMPK and NRF2, and acting as an antioxidant. Most of that was shown in cells in a dish, at levels well above what a pill produces in human blood. Why it raises LDL cholesterol in people is not known. The study that found it was not built to explain it. Nobody has followed up on the clues, that adding grape extract removed the rise and that a cholesterol drug blunted it.
What have studies in people found about Pterostilbene?
One study of 80 adults, reported in two papers, one on effects and one on safety. It ran six to eight weeks and measured blood fats, blood pressure and weight. That is the whole human record.
- LDL cholesterol rose 17.1 mg/dL on pterostilbene alone. Lower doses also raised LDL, but not by enough to rule out chance.
- The LDL rise did not happen when pterostilbene was mixed with grape extract, and was smaller in people already on a cholesterol drug.
- The top blood pressure number fell 7.8 points and the bottom number 7.3 on 125 mg twice a day.
- People not on a cholesterol drug saw a small drop in BMI, 0.62 points.
- No drug reactions showed up in liver, kidney or blood sugar tests at up to 250 mg a day.
- No human study has measured thinking, lifespan, heart attacks or any ageing measure.
What this does not tell you: Eighty people split four ways is about twenty per group, for six to eight weeks, with no follow-up. The good result and the bad one both come from this one small study, and neither has been repeated. Blood pressure and LDL are both stand-in markers. This is an odd case where the compound moved one the way you want and the other the way you do not, in the same people, over the same weeks. Nobody has run the study that would tell you which one matters more.
The state of the research
A stand-in marker is a lab number used in place of the thing you actually care about. The idea is that if you move the number, you move the health result. That idea has failed often enough that it should be treated as a claim, not a fact. Homocysteine is the classic case. In studies that watch people, high homocysteine strongly predicts heart disease. Several cheap supplements can lower it reliably. But when studies lowered it and then counted heart attacks, the heart attacks did not go down. The lesson is not that markers are worthless. It is that a study reporting a marker has answered a smaller question than the one the buyer is asking. The page should say which question was answered.
Pterostilbene is the clearest example on this page of bad news left out. The study has two findings of about equal strength. One, the blood pressure drop, is quoted all the time in product copy. The other, a 17.1 mg/dL rise in LDL cholesterol, is quoted almost nowhere. That is despite it coming first in the results, first in the summary's conclusion, and in the paper's own one-line takeaway.
No lifespan data for this compound, in any species, could be found for this page. Its parent, resveratrol, was tested by the Interventions Testing Program and did not make mice live longer. Pterostilbene is better absorbed than a compound that failed. That is an argument about getting it into the body, not about what it does there.
This archive's position on supplements is simple. You take something because a number on your blood work is out of range. Then you retest, and you stop if the number does not move. That rule is awkward for this group. For most of them there is no shortage to fix, so no blood number tells you whether the bottle is doing anything. Where a compound here does move a number you can read, that number is a stand-in marker, not a shortage. Moving it is not the same as fixing something that was broken.
The evidence, in charts
Fig. 1a · how many people
160people, across 2 studies in people cited here
| Study | People | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine 2014 | 80 | 50% |
| Journal of Toxicology 2013 | 80 | 50% |
One study holds 50% of these people, so the total rests more on one study than its size suggests. 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. Studies still signing people up are left out, and only studies cited on this page are counted.
Fig. 1b · evidence mix
2 of 4 sources here are studies in people. The rest are not.
- Study in people · done in people250%
- Animal study · done in animals250%
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 4 different years, 2008 to 2014, counted from the list of sources on this page. The newest source on file is from 2014, 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
- Supplement
- Molecule weight
- 256.3 Da. A stilbene, 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: Not established in humans. No human pharmacokinetic study was located for this entry; the comparative absorption work is in rats.
No amino acid sequence is on file for Pterostilbene, which is expected: a supplement is not built from amino acids.
The studies we cite
- Study in people2014Pterostilbene on metabolic parameters: a randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled trial.
It pushed blood pressure down and bad cholesterol up. 80 adults with raised cholesterol took pterostilbene at 125 mg twice a day, at 50 mg twice a day, at 50 mg with grape extract, or a dummy, for 6 to 8 weeks. On pterostilbene alone, bad cholesterol rose 17.1 units. Adding grape extract removed that rise. On the high dose, the upper blood pressure number fell 7.8 points and the lower one 7.3. Raising bad cholesterol in people who already have too much is a real trade-off.
80 adults with total cholesterol at or above 200 mg/dL and/or LDL at or above 100 mg/dL, in four arms for 6 to 8 weeks: pterostilbene 125 mg twice daily, 50 mg twice daily, 50 mg plus grape extract 100 mg twice daily, or placebo. LDL rose 17.1 mg/dL on pterostilbene monotherapy (p = 0.001), an effect not seen with the grape extract combination (p = 0.47) and attenuated by background cholesterol medication. Systolic blood pressure fell 7.8 mmHg (p < 0.01) and diastolic 7.3 mmHg (p < 0.001) on the high dose. Registered as NCT01267227.
- Study in people2013Analysis of safety from a human clinical trial with pterostilbene.
This is a safety report and it makes no claim that the compound works. It covers the same 80 patients, of whom 91.3 percent finished, averaging 54 years old and 71 percent women. Liver, kidney and blood sugar markers showed no drug reactions, and no meaningful self-reported or major reactions turned up. The authors conclude pterostilbene is generally safe up to 250 mg a day. Read it beside the trial it came from. Safe is not the same as useful, and that same trial found bad cholesterol rising.
The safety report from the same 80-patient trial, 91.3 percent completion, average age 54, 71 percent female. No adverse drug reactions on hepatic, renal or glucose markers and no statistically significant self-reported or major adverse reactions. The stated conclusion is that pterostilbene is generally safe for use in humans up to 250 mg a day. It reports safety only and makes no efficacy claim.
- Animal study2011Pharmacokinetics, oral bioavailability, and metabolic profile of resveratrol and its dimethylether analog, pterostilbene, in rats.
In rats. Rats got the same amount of resveratrol or pterostilbene by mouth for 14 days. About 20 percent of the resveratrol got into the body, against about 80 percent of the pterostilbene. This is where the better-absorbed claim comes from, and it is a rat study.
Rats dosed orally for 14 consecutive days at equimolar levels. Resveratrol was approximately 20 percent bioavailable and pterostilbene approximately 80 percent, with markedly higher plasma levels of parent compound and sulfate metabolite for pterostilbene. This is the source of the better-absorbed-than-resveratrol claim, and it is a rat study. NIH funded.
- Animal study2008Cellular and behavioral effects of stilbene resveratrol analogues: implications for reducing the deleterious effects of aging.
In old rats. Rats aged 19 months ate food with a little pterostilbene added. It was picked as the best of seven similar compounds in a cell test. It reversed problems with thinking and with release of the brain chemical dopamine. Rats with more of it in a memory area of the brain had better working memory. This is about thinking in old rats, not about lifespan, and not about people.
19 month old Fischer 344 rats fed diets containing 0.004 or 0.016 percent pterostilbene, selected as the most effective of seven stilbenes in a cell screen. Pterostilbene reversed cognitive behavioural deficits and dopamine release deficits, and working memory correlated with pterostilbene levels in the hippocampus. Aged rats, not people, and a cognition endpoint rather than a lifespan one.
Common questions
Has Pterostilbene been tested in people?
Yes. 80 people given it across 1 completed trial cited here, 0 of which found nothing. One study in people: 80 adults with high cholesterol. At 250 mg a day, it lowered the top blood pressure number by 7.8 points. In the same people, it raised LDL, the bad cholesterol, by 17.1 mg/dL. No human study has measured anything to do with ageing.
What is the Pterostilbene 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. 1 completed trial, 80 people given it
Is Pterostilbene FDA-approved?
Not an approved drug. Sold as a dietary supplement, often mixed with nicotinamide riboside or resveratrol in longevity products.
Is pterostilbene better than resveratrol?
Better absorbed, in rats: about 80 percent gets into the body, against about 20 percent for resveratrol at the same dose. Whether that means a better result in a person is untested. Resveratrol itself did not make mice live longer in testing at several labs. So being a better-absorbed version of it is not, on its own, a reason to expect more.
Does pterostilbene raise cholesterol?
In the one human study, yes. LDL cholesterol rose 17.1 mg/dL on pterostilbene alone at 250 mg a day, a gap unlikely to be chance. Lower doses raised it too, but not clearly. The rise did not happen when it was mixed with grape extract, and it was smaller in people already on a cholesterol drug. This is one study of 80 people, and nobody has repeated it either way.
Does it lower blood pressure?
In the same study, the top number fell 7.8 points and the bottom number 7.3 at 125 mg twice a day. That is a meaningful size. It is also a six to eight week result, in about twenty people on that dose, measuring a stand-in marker, with no data at all on heart attacks or strokes.
Is there any anti-ageing evidence?
Not in humans. And no lifespan result in any species could be confirmed for this page. The closest is a 2008 study in 19-month-old rats, where it reversed problems with thinking and with the brain chemical dopamine. Their working memory tracked how much of it reached a memory area of the brain. That is a finding about thinking in old rats.
How much has been tested in people?
Up to 250 mg a day for six to eight weeks, in 80 adults, in one study. The safety report from that study found no liver, kidney or blood sugar warning signs at that dose. Nothing is known about longer use or higher doses in people.