Brain
Does it help anxiety or low mood?
Measured on rating scales, in people who mostly had a diagnosis.
1,732
people in trials
16
human studies
0
compounds, animal or cell only
4
trials found nothing
Measured in people
Ranked by how many people, which is a fact about the evidence and not a judgement about the compound. The one at the top is the most studied, which is not the same as the best. Counts are never added across compounds, because the same person can appear in more than one trial.
- 1,432 people1 human study
CHOIR: 1,432 people with chronic kidney disease randomised open-label to a haemoglobin target of 13.5 or 11.3 g/dL, median 16 months. The composite of death, myocardial infarction, heart failure hospitalisation and stroke occurred 125 times in the high-target group and 97 times in the low-target group, hazard ratio 1.34, 95 percent confidence interval 1.03 to 1.74, p = 0.03, with no improvement in quality of life. Registry status TERMINATED; sponsor Johnson and Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development.
New England Journal of Medicine, 2006 · 1,432 people
- 62 people1 human study
62 patients with generalised anxiety disorder or neurasthenia randomised to Selank, 30 patients, or the benzodiazepine medazepam, 32 patients. Anxiolytic effects were similar between the two, and Selank additionally showed anti-asthenic and psychostimulant effects. An active comparator design with no placebo arm, and no Semax given.
Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S.S. Korsakova, 2008 · 62 people
What people using it report
- A flatter, calmer mood attributed to the Selank, described as taking the edge off without sedation.
- Overstimulation, irritability and trouble sleeping when Semax is dosed late in the day, which is the most common complaint and the reason people add Selank in the first place.
- 62 people1 human study
62 patients with generalised anxiety disorder and neurasthenia, 30 on selank and 32 on medazepam, assessed with the Hamilton, Zung and CGI scales alongside serum enkephalin activity. The anxiolytic effects of the two drugs were similar, and selank also showed antiasthenic and psychostimulant effects. An active comparator trial in a Russian journal, with no Western replication.
Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S.S. Korsakova, 2008 · 62 people
What people using it report
- Reduced anxiety without sedation, attributed to the selank, which matches what the comparative trial reported.
- Irritability or overstimulation, particularly at higher amounts.
- 62 people1 human study
62 patients with generalised anxiety disorder and neurasthenia, 30 on selank against 32 on medazepam. Anxiolytic effects were similar between the two drugs, and selank additionally showed antiasthenic and psychostimulant effects. The psychostimulant finding is worth noting in a product sold for sleep.
Zhurnal Nevrologii i Psikhiatrii imeni S.S. Korsakova, 2008 · 62 people
- 39 people1 human study
39 adults with functional constipation, four weeks of 12 g chicory inulin daily in a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover. Stool frequency, abdominal symptoms and constipation-related quality of life improved relative to placebo, alongside higher relative abundance of butyrate-producing Anaerostipes and Coprococcus. A carry-over effect meant the crossover was compromised, and the authors re-analysed the first period alone as a parallel trial, which supported the same conclusion.
BMC Gastroenterology, 2025 · 39 people
- 29 people1 human study
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.
Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2017 · 29 people
- 26 people1 human study
Live bee stings, up to 20 per session three times weekly for 24 weeks, versus no treatment, in 26 people with relapsing MS. No reduction in new gadolinium enhancing MRI lesions, T2 lesion load, relapse rate, disability, fatigue or quality of life. No serious adverse events. Academic trial, Netherlands.
Neurology, 2005 · 26 people
- 20 people1 human study1 found nothing
found nothingThe only trial of NPY itself in people resolved here. Twenty six individuals with PTSD were randomised into one of five single ascending dose cohorts of intranasal NPY, from 1.4 mg to 9.6 mg, each dosed with NPY and with placebo a week apart under double-blind crossover conditions, with assessment after a trauma script provocation. Twenty four completed both days. NPY was tolerated to the highest dose. There was a significant treatment by dose interaction favouring NPY on the Beck Anxiety Inventory (F1,20 = 4.95, P = .038) and no significant interaction on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The authors describe this as suggesting NPY may be associated with anxiolytic effects and call for future studies. Registered as NCT01533519, a phase 1 study, completed.
International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2018 · 20 people
- no headcount stated3 human studies
Phase 3, 465 enrolled, weekly intravenous rapastinel 450 mg or placebo added to an antidepressant. Posted results: MADRS change at 3 weeks of -4.7 on rapastinel versus -5.0 on placebo, least squares mean difference 0.3 (95% CI -1.07 to 1.72), p = 0.65. Sponsor funded; results posted October 2019, never published in a journal.
ClinicalTrials.gov, Naurex / Allergan, 2016 · no headcount in the line
Phase 3, 658 enrolled, rapastinel 225 mg, 450 mg or placebo weekly. Posted results: MADRS change at 3 weeks of -4.8 (225 mg), -5.4 (450 mg) and -4.9 (placebo); p = 0.89 for 225 mg versus placebo and p = 0.58 for the 450 mg comparison. Sponsor funded; results posted December 2019.
ClinicalTrials.gov, Naurex / Allergan, 2016 · no headcount in the line
Phase 3, 429 enrolled, rapastinel 450 mg or placebo weekly. Posted results: MADRS change at 3 weeks of -5.1 versus -4.1, least squares mean difference -1.0 (95% CI -2.70 to 0.68), p = 0.24. Sponsor funded; results posted November 2019.
ClinicalTrials.gov, Naurex / Allergan, 2016 · no headcount in the line
- no headcount stated1 human study
81 outpatients with major depression randomised to 30 mg/day, 45 mg/day or placebo by subcutaneous injection on weekdays for 2 weeks, followed for 4 more. Primary measure MADRS change. The authors report superiority of 45 mg over placebo at the timepoint of peak effect, one week after treatment ended, and separation from placebo only in the exploratory subgroup with baseline HAM-D above 22. No dropouts for adverse events. Described by its authors as a proof of principle study. Developer funded (Innapharma).
International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 2006 · no headcount in the line
- no headcount stated1 human study1 found nothing
found nothingThe T-Trials. Treatment raised testosterone into the mid-normal range for men aged 19 to 40. Sexual activity, sexual desire and erectile function all improved significantly. Vitality did not improve on the fatigue scale. The proportion improving 6-minute walking distance by at least 50 m did not differ in the Physical Function Trial but did when all three trials were pooled, 20.5% against 12.6%, p = 0.003. Mood and depressive symptoms were slightly better. Adverse event rates were similar.
New England Journal of Medicine, 2016 · no headcount in the line
- no headcount stated1 human study1 found nothing
found nothingONTRANS, the replication attempt by the same group in a higher-risk population. 158 organ-transplant recipients with at least two keratinocyte cancers in the previous 5 years, randomised 1:1 to the same 500 mg twice daily for 12 months. The trial was stopped early for poor recruitment. There were 207 new keratinocyte cancers on nicotinamide and 210 on placebo, rate ratio 1.0 (95 percent CI 0.8 to 1.3, P=0.96). No difference in squamous-cell or basal-cell counts, actinic keratoses or quality of life.
New England Journal of Medicine, 2023 · no headcount in the line
- no headcount stated1 human study1 found nothing
found nothingA clean randomised controlled negative on a behavioural endpoint. Kisspeptin administration raised reproductive hormones as expected and did not affect anxiety. This is the closest the kisspeptin literature comes to a psychological outcome measure, and the result was null.
The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2025 · no headcount in the line
- no headcount stated1 human study
Thirty pre- and postmenopausal women with sexual dysfunction, randomised double-blind placebo-controlled crossover over 22 weeks, 32 IU of intranasal oxytocin or placebo before intercourse. Female Sexual Function Index rose 26% on oxytocin and 31% on placebo, Sexual Quality of Life 144% and 125%, and sexual distress fell 36% and 45%. There was no statistically significant treatment, sequence or interaction effect. Both improved; the drug did not beat placebo.
Fertility and Sterility, 2015 · no headcount in the line
What people using these actually report
Uncontrolled self-reports, gathered from clinic write-ups, regulatory complaint records and public forums, and reproduced here as written. They are the best guide on this page to what people actually do, what they expect, and what goes wrong, and they cannot show that anything works, because nobody was measured against a placebo and the people who saw no effect mostly stopped posting. Both halves of that are true at once. The negative reports are kept in for the same reason.
- A flatter, calmer mood attributed to the Selank, described as taking the edge off without sedation.
- Overstimulation, irritability and trouble sleeping when Semax is dosed late in the day, which is the most common complaint and the reason people add Selank in the first place.
Sources: None of this is from a trial. There are no exit interviews for the combination because there is no trial of the combination. These reports come from nootropic and peptide user forums including r/Nootropics and r/Peptides, and from vendor and clinic write-ups. The Russian studies cited on this page did not collect side effect data in a form comparable to a Western adverse event table.
- Reduced anxiety without sedation, attributed to the selank, which matches what the comparative trial reported.
- Irritability or overstimulation, particularly at higher amounts.
Sources: Nootropic forums including r/nootropics and r/peptides, and vendor pages. Uncontrolled self-reports in a domain where expectation effects on subjective cognition are large and where nobody is measuring anything.
- Described consistently as an anti-anxiety compound rather than a stimulant, and repeatedly contrasted with prescription anxiety medication as feeling unlike either an SSRI or a benzodiazepine, without sedation and without a withdrawal narrative.
- The effect size people report is modest. Even favourable accounts describe it as taking the edge off rather than removing anxiety, and some running several hundred micrograms a day report only a very slight effect.
Sources: Mental Health, Brain Health and product discussion threads on LongeCity, found by site-restricted search and read directly, September 2026. Nothing above is attributed to any specific post and no post is reproduced.
- Low mood and blunted enjoyment are raised as a specific negative by some users, who describe it as a distinct effect rather than an unrelated coincidence, and other users regularly point them toward discussing it with a clinician. It is also described as taking a couple of weeks to clear after stopping.
Sources: Public discussion in r/Semaglutide, r/Zepbound, r/glp1 and general subreddits where GLP-1 drugs come up, read through the PullPush Reddit archive on 2026-09-13 because Reddit's own endpoints are unreachable from this environment. 62 comments reviewed. Nothing above is attributed to any specific post and no comment is reproduced.
- Anxiety is the sharpest disagreement in the whole discussion. A substantial group report it makes anxiety worse and describe it as anxiety-inducing, particularly at higher doses, while others report the opposite. Both positions are held by long-term users and neither is fringe.
Sources: Brain Health and Nootropic Stacks threads on LongeCity, including multi-page experience threads, found by site-restricted search and read directly, September 2026. Nothing above is attributed to any specific post and no post is reproduced.
- The negatives in that same corpus are of the same kind rather than systemic: sleep disturbance 6, insomnia 5, sleepiness 3, anxiety 3, waking too early 2, low mood 1. People who react badly tend to react in the sleep and mood direction.
Sources: LongeCity 'Telomeres' forum threads on Epitalon and Epithalon; the Age Reversal Forum self-experimentation thread on Epitalon (AEDG); SelfAssay's aggregated community corpus for Epitalon (258 reports, 236 contributors); vendor price tracking at peppers.market (73 vendors, retrieved August 2026). Reddit's r/Peptides is the most cited venue for this compound but was not directly readable when this section was compiled, so nothing here is drawn from it.
- Reported interest skews toward biomarkers people cannot feel rather than subjective sensation: posters more often describe checking bloodwork such as lipids, glucose or CRP than describing an energy, mood or cognitive change they noticed day to day.
Sources: LONGECITY's Resveratrol subforum (including a long-running 'Positive, Negative, ZERO, effect noticed?' poll thread and a dedicated side-effects thread), general web search of longevity-community and vendor commentary on dosing, form and piperine practice, and Peter Attia's public podcast and written statements. Direct access to r/longevity, r/Supplements and r/Biohackers on Reddit was not available in this research pass (Reddit pages could not be fetched and did not surface in general web search here), so those specific subreddits could not be independently checked and any overlap with the sentiment described above is inferred, not confirmed firsthand.
- Hair loss anxiety is widespread in forums and drives many people to stop. The evidence behind it is one unreplicated study that never measured hair.
Sources: Strength training forums and supplement communities. Uncontrolled self-report, included for expectations rather than as evidence.
- A lift in energy and mood for a day or two after a drip, which is the most common report and which the fibromyalgia trial suggests is also what people report on lactated Ringer's.
Sources: The infusion reactions and the price complaints come from IV clinic write-ups and user forums and are not trial data. The B6 neuropathy signal comes from published case reports and from the cell work cited on this page. The fatigue improvement in genuine deficiency comes from clinical literature. The Myers cocktail trial is the only controlled comparison here, and it is the reason to treat the post-drip lift as unproven rather than as a finding.
- Anxiety after the impurity finding was publicised, and a shift back towards single-ingredient compounded vials.
Sources: Trial adverse event tables for the gastrointestinal pattern. The rest from forums including r/tirzepatidecompound and telehealth patient communities, uncontrolled and self-reported.
- A general sense of wellbeing during a course.
Sources: Longevity and peptide forums including r/peptides, and vendor pages. Uncontrolled self-reports on outcomes that cannot be assessed by an individual over a short period, since the claimed endpoint of the original study was mortality.
Why the trial record looks like this
A missing trial is usually a missing sponsor. Nobody runs a nine-figure programme on a molecule they cannot own, so the compounds with the thinnest human records are often the oldest and most freely available ones rather than the weakest. Taking Erythropoietin as the example, because it states the problem most clearly:
Erythropoietin is the clearest example in this catalogue of a biomarker that looked like an outcome. Anaemia predicts death in kidney disease, EPO corrects anaemia, and the inference that correcting it fully would reduce death was tested three times in randomised trials and failed three times, once with a doubling of stroke. The regulatory response was a boxed warning that says in plain language that no target, dose or strategy has been found that avoids the risk. That sequence is worth holding onto whenever a compound is recommended because it moves a number in the right direction.
The doping history runs alongside. EPO transformed endurance sport in the 1990s, it is prohibited in and out of competition under the World Anti-Doping Agency's section S2, and the randomised evidence in healthy volunteers does show improvements in maximal power output and time to exhaustion, which is unusual: most doping agents have a thinner evidence base than their reputation suggests. The thrombotic risk that the kidney trials documented in patients is the same mechanism that makes covert use in athletes dangerous, and the dose and haematocrit involved in doping are higher than anything the trials tested.
One peptide on this site descends directly from this hormone: ARA-290, a non-erythropoietic EPO-derived peptide designed to keep the tissue-protective signalling without raising red cell mass. That design choice exists precisely because of the trials described above.
A compound appears here only when a citation on its own page states this outcome and reports a result for it; naming it is not enough. Human, animal and cell work are counted separately and never merged. Participant counts are read from the study lines and deliberately undercount. Nothing here is advice, and nothing here is a recommendation to take or to avoid anything.