The published side effects of CJC-1295 amount to two short trials from 2006. Both reported no serious adverse reactions. Over four to seven weeks in healthy adults, that's close to the least a trial can find, and it's the whole human record you get.
The published side-effect record for CJC-1295 is two placebo-controlled dose-ranging trials from 2006, lasting 28 and 49 days. Both reported no serious adverse reactions, and tolerance was best at the lower doses of 30 to 60 µg/kg. Nothing longer has been published since. The risks worth knowing come from the growth-hormone class, not from CJC-1295 itself.
What the two trials reported
Teichman and colleagues ran two randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled ascending-dose studies in healthy adults aged 21 to 61, lasting 28 and 49 days. A single injection raised mean plasma growth hormone 2- to 10-fold for six days or more, and IGF-1 1.5- to 3-fold for nine to eleven days. After repeated doses, IGF-1 stayed above baseline for up to 28 days.
Subcutaneous administration of CJC-1295 resulted in sustained, dose-dependent increases in GH and IGF-I levels in healthy adults. [It] was safe and relatively well tolerated, particularly at doses of 30 or 60 µg/kg.
Teichman et al., Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 2006The second study, by Ionescu and Frohman, gave healthy men a single 60 or 90 µg/kg dose and sampled blood overnight. Trough growth hormone rose 7.5-fold, mean GH rose 46% and IGF-1 rose 45%, with the natural pulse pattern preserved. That is the entire human dataset. Two papers, both from 2006, both measuring hormones rather than outcomes.
Why that is not a safety profile
"No serious adverse reactions were reported" is a true sentence about a small, short experiment. It is not a clearance.
These were dose-ranging pharmacology studies in dozens of healthy adults over four to seven weeks. An adverse effect that appears in one person in a thousand, or after a year of exposure, could not have shown up in them. Absence of a finding in a study too small to find it is not evidence of safety.
Note also what the trials measured. Growth hormone and IGF-1 concentrations, pharmacokinetics, tolerability at the injection site. There was no glucose-tolerance endpoint carried over months, no body-composition endpoint, no cardiovascular endpoint, and no follow-up after dosing stopped.
We'd point you at the phrasing too. The conclusion singles out 30 and 60 µg/kg as well tolerated. That implies the higher doses in the ascending series were less so.
The wider point is that no randomized trial of CJC-1295 for muscle, fat, sleep or aging outcomes has ever been published. A compound with no efficacy trials also has no safety data from efficacy trials, which is where most side-effect tables in medicine actually come from.
CJC-1295
The 29-amino-acid GHRH analog discussed here, supplied as research-use-only material with a batch-matched certificate of analysis.
The trial-deaths claim, checked
Search results frequently state that CJC-1295 development stopped after deaths in a clinical trial. We went looking for the primary source and could not find one.
What the published record contains: two human studies, both reporting no serious adverse reactions, and no trial report documenting a death on CJC-1295. The developer's program did end. Clinical programs end for many reasons, including funding, strategy and portfolio decisions, and most of those leave no public trace in the peer-reviewed literature.
So the accurate statement is narrow, and it cuts both ways. Nothing in the published CJC-1295 literature records a death.
That literature is also far too small and too short to have detected a rare fatal event. Its silence is weak evidence in either direction. Whichever version of this story you've read, treat the confident telling of it as something the sources don't support.
What the class does document
The useful safety information for a GHRH analog does not come from CJC-1295. It comes from tesamorelin, the one compound in this class that ran Phase III trials and carries a label, and from reviews of growth hormone secretagogues as a group.
- Injection-site reactions. The most common complaint by frequency in daily-dosing trials.
- Fluid retention. Peripheral edema, joint pain and muscle aches — the classic signature of raising growth hormone.
- Nerve compression symptoms. Tingling and carpal-tunnel-type complaints, driven by soft-tissue swelling.
- Glucose handling. Growth hormone opposes insulin. This is the effect with real clinical weight and the one monitored on the tesamorelin label.
Available studies indicate that GHSs are well tolerated, with some concern for increases in blood glucose because of decreases in insulin sensitivity.
Sigalos & Pastuszak, Sexual Medicine Reviews, 2018That review closes by noting what is still missing for the class: long-term data, including cancer incidence and mortality. Chronically elevated IGF-1 is the mechanistic reason that question is asked, and it has not been answered for any compound here.
Adverse events did not differ significantly between the two study groups, but more patients in the tesamorelin group withdrew from the study because of an adverse event.
Falutz et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 2007That is what a measured tolerability signal looks like: not a dramatic finding, but a real one, in 412 people, with a placebo arm to compare against. Nothing equivalent exists for CJC-1295. Our tesamorelin side-effect review covers the labeled profile in full.
The DAC problem
One measured property of CJC-1295 matters more for safety than anything in its adverse-event record: the half-life. With the drug affinity complex attached, it is 5.8 to 8.1 days.
That changes the shape of any adverse effect. With a short-acting peptide, stopping the injections ends the exposure within hours. With the DAC version, a dose already given keeps raising growth hormone for a week, and IGF-1 for up to 28 days above baseline after repeated dosing. You can't withdraw a dose that's already in.
The no-DAC form, sold as Modified GRF 1-29, does not have this property, and the two are frequently sold under the same name. If a page discusses CJC-1295 side effects without saying which form it means, it is describing two different pharmacological situations at once. The receptor mechanism is identical; the exposure profile is not.
The risks that come from the supply, not the molecule
For a compound with no approved product anywhere, some of the realistic risk sits outside the pharmacology entirely.
- No regulated source. CJC-1295 is not approved by any major regulator, and the FDA placed it among the bulk substances not eligible for compounding under section 503A. There is no pharmacy-grade supply chain.
- Identity and purity. What is in the vial is established by the batch certificate of analysis or not at all. A reaction to an impurity is indistinguishable from a reaction to the peptide.
- Sport. It is prohibited under WADA category S2, with validated urine and blood detection methods published across the 2020s. The consequence there is a sanction, not a side effect, but it is the risk most likely to actually materialize.
Recent reviews of peptide use in sport make the same point. In an unregulated channel, manufacturing quality and contamination are documented hazards, separate from the properties of the molecule. Reading the certificate of analysis is the one control you actually have.
CJC-1295
Research-use-only material, sold by the vial with batch documentation. Check the certificate of analysis against the batch you receive.
What to know now
- The human safety record is two trials from 2006. Both were dose-ranging pharmacology studies, lasting 28 and 49 days.
- Both reported no serious adverse reactions, with tolerance best at 30 to 60 µg/kg. Nothing longer has been published since.
- The claim that the program ended after trial deaths has no primary source we could find — and the published studies are too small to rule such an event in or out.
- The documented class effects — injection-site reactions, edema, joint pain, nerve compression symptoms and impaired glucose handling — come from tesamorelin's trials, not from this compound.
- The DAC form's 5.8 to 8.1 day half-life means an adverse effect cannot be stopped by stopping the injections.
What we're watching
Two things would move this page. The first is any registered trial of a GHRH analog outside the HIV indication. That would generate the first modern adverse-event data in this class in two decades.
The second is long-term IGF-1 and cancer-incidence data for growth hormone secretagogues as a group. It's the open question every review in this area closes on, and the one a short pharmacology study can never answer.
Frequently asked questions
What side effects were reported in the CJC-1295 trials?
No serious adverse reactions were reported in either 2006 study. The authors described the compound as safe and relatively well tolerated, particularly at 30 and 60 µg/kg, over trials lasting 28 and 49 days.
Did people die in a CJC-1295 trial?
No published trial report documents a death on CJC-1295, and we could not find a primary source for the claim that development stopped because of trial deaths. The published record is also too small to have detected a rare fatal event, so it settles very little.
What are the likely side effects based on the class?
Our answer comes from tesamorelin's Phase III record and reviews of growth hormone secretagogues. Expect injection-site reactions, fluid retention with joint pain and swelling, tingling or carpal-tunnel-type symptoms, and worsened glucose handling. These are class effects, measured in other compounds.
Is the DAC or no-DAC form riskier?
They differ in exposure, not in receptor action. The DAC form has a 5.8 to 8.1 day half-life, so a dose keeps acting for a week or more and cannot be withdrawn. The no-DAC form clears within hours, which limits how long any effect persists.
References
- Teichman, S. L., Neale, A., Lawrence, B., Gagnon, C., Castaigne, J. P., & Frohman, L. A. (2006). Prolonged stimulation of growth hormone (GH) and insulin-like growth factor I secretion by CJC-1295, a long-acting analog of GH-releasing hormone, in healthy adults. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, 91(3), 799–805. https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2005-1536
- Ionescu, M., & Frohman, L. A. (2006). Pulsatile secretion of growth hormone (GH) persists during continuous stimulation by CJC-1295, a long-acting GHRH analog. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 91(12), 4792–4797. https://doi.org/10.1210/jc.2006-1702
- Sigalos, J. T., & Pastuszak, A. W. (2018). The safety and efficacy of growth hormone secretagogues. Sexual Medicine Reviews, 6(1), 45–53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sxmr.2017.02.004
- Falutz, J., Allas, S., Blot, K., et al. (2007). Metabolic effects of a growth hormone–releasing factor in patients with HIV. New England Journal of Medicine, 357(23), 2359–2370. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa072375
- Falutz, J., Allas, S., Mamputu, J. C., et al. (2008). Long-term safety and effects of tesamorelin, a growth hormone-releasing factor analogue, in HIV patients with abdominal fat accumulation. AIDS, 22(14), 1719–1728. https://doi.org/10.1097/qad.0b013e32830a5058
- Sinha, D. K., Balasubramanian, A., Tatem, A. J., et al. (2020). Beyond the androgen receptor: the role of growth hormone secretagogues in the modern management of body composition in hypogonadal males. Translational Andrology and Urology, 9(Suppl 2), S149–S159. https://doi.org/10.21037/tau.2019.11.30
- World Anti-Doping Agency. The Prohibited List 2026. https://www.wada-ama.org/en/prohibited-list
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2024). Bulk Drug Substances Nominated for Use in Compounding Under Section 503A of the FD&C Act. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/bulk-drug-substances-nominated-use-compounding
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2024). Section 503A of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/human-drug-compounding/section-503a-federal-food-drug-and-cosmetic-act
- Coutinho, L. F. D., De Oliveira Neves, L. F., & Camilo, R. P. (2026). A new era of doping? Use of peptide and peptide-analog drugs in recreational and professional sport and bodybuilding. Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness. https://doi.org/10.23736/S0022-4707.26.17773-1
- Memdouh, S., Gavrilović, I., Ng, K., Cowan, D., & Abbate, V. (2021). Advances in the detection of growth hormone releasing hormone synthetic analogs. Drug Testing and Analysis, 13(11–12), 1871–1887. https://doi.org/10.1002/dta.3183