Kisspeptin-10: evidence, dosing, safety & interactions
The C-terminal decapeptide fragment of kisspeptin (KISS1 gene product), Tyr-Asn-Trp-Asn-Ser-Phe-Gly-Leu-Arg-Phe-NH2
Also sold or labeled as: KP-10, KP10, Metastin (45-54)
This is a fragment of a hormone your body already makes to control reproduction and sex drive. Unusually for a 'research peptide,' it has been tested in dozens of real human studies — but always in short, supervised, hospital settings, never as a self-administered product, and no trial has shown it treats an actual diagnosed condition.
- What it is
- The minimal active fragment of kisspeptin, the master upstream regulator of the reproductive hormone axis, studied at academic medical centres as an investigational reproductive/psychosexual therapy — not an approved drug.
- Evidence
- Dozens of randomised, placebo-controlled human trials (mostly single-dose or short IV infusion under clinical supervision) show real effects on LH secretion, brain connectivity and psychometric measures of sexual/emotional processing.
- Studied dose
- IV infusion at 0.1–4 µg/kg/h or 0.1–1.0 nmol/kg/h in trials, or single subcutaneous/IV bolus doses of 0.15–2.4 nmol/kg — always short-duration and clinically monitored, never a self-administered outpatient regimen.
- Safety
- Well tolerated across the published trials at studied clinical doses with no serious adverse events reported, but every trial involved brief, supervised, single or short-course dosing — there is no long-term or repeated self-dosing safety data of any kind.
What human trials actually show
Randomized, placebo-controlled human trials only. Animal data never appears in this section — it cannot raise a grade, and it is noted separately below.
- 01Human Reproduction2015— Direct comparison of IV kisspeptin-10, kisspeptin-54 and GnRH on gonadotrophin secretion
- Design
- Single-blinded, placebo-controlled physiological study
- Dose
- IV infusion of kisspeptin-10, kisspeptin-54 or GnRH at 0.1, 0.3 and 1.0 nmol/kg/h for 3 hours
- Duration
- Single 3-hour infusion per visit, at least a week apart
25 healthy men (5 per dosing group)
Kisspeptin-10 and kisspeptin-54 produced similar LH/FSH secretion at matched doses; GnRH was roughly 2-3x more potent than either kisspeptin isoform. Establishes kisspeptin-10 as pharmacologically active and roughly equipotent to the -54 isoform in men.
doi:10.1093/humrep/dev143 - 02Human Reproduction2020— Kisspeptin-10 and neurokinin B interactions on gonadotropin secretion in PCOS
- Design
- Randomised, placebo-controlled crossover trial
- Dose
- Kisspeptin-10 IV infusion at 4 µg/kg/h for 7 hours, with or without prior NK3-receptor antagonist
- Duration
- 7-hour infusion per study visit
15 women with polycystic ovary syndrome
Kisspeptin-10 significantly increased LH secretion in women with PCOS regardless of prior NK3-receptor blockade, demonstrating a preserved and reproducible response to exogenous kisspeptin-10 in a clinical population with reproductive endocrine dysfunction.
doi:10.1093/humrep/deaa104 - 03The Journal of Clinical Investigation2017— Kisspeptin's effect on sexual and emotional brain processing
- Design
- Randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study with functional MRI
- Dose
- IV kisspeptin infusion vs vehicle
- Duration
- Single infusion per study visit
29 healthy heterosexual men
Kisspeptin administration enhanced limbic brain activity in response to sexual and couple-bonding stimuli, correlated with psychometric measures of reward and reduced sexual aversion, and attenuated negative mood — the first human evidence that kisspeptin modulates brain circuits tied to sexual and emotional behaviour, not just peripheral hormone secretion.
doi:10.1172/JCI89519 - 04JCI Insight2018— Kisspeptin's modulation of resting brain connectivity
- Design
- Randomised, double-blind, two-way placebo-controlled crossover study with functional MRI
- Dose
- IV kisspeptin infusion vs vehicle
- Duration
- Single infusion per study visit
Healthy men
Kisspeptin altered default mode network connectivity in a pattern that correlated with increased limbic response to sexual stimuli and reduced sexual aversion, and enhanced connectivity between mood-related limbic structures (amygdala, hippocampus, cingulate).
doi:10.1172/jci.insight.121958 - 05JCI Insight2020— Kisspeptin's enhancement of brain responses to attraction cues
- Design
- Randomised, placebo-controlled crossover study with functional neuroimaging
- Dose
- IV kisspeptin infusion vs vehicle
- Duration
- Single infusion per study visit
Healthy men
Kisspeptin enhanced brain activity in olfactory and limbic regions in response to visual and olfactory cues of attraction, with the largest effect in men who reported lower baseline sexual quality-of-life scores — suggesting a possible role for disorders of sexual interest, not evidence of benefit in people without such a disorder.
doi:10.1172/jci.insight.133633
Every published kisspeptin trial is a single-dose or short-infusion study conducted in a hospital research unit under continuous clinical monitoring — none has tested repeated, self-administered outpatient dosing of any duration. No trial has enrolled people with a diagnosed condition (hypoactive sexual desire disorder, infertility from hypogonadotropic hypogonadism) and measured whether kisspeptin actually treats it as a primary outcome; the fertility and sexual-behaviour studies measure hormone pulses and brain/psychometric readouts in healthy volunteers, which is mechanistically informative but not the same as a therapeutic outcome trial. There is no published human safety data beyond single or short-course supervised dosing, no established outpatient dose, and no data at all on the unsupervised, repeated self-injection this compound is actually sold for online.
Grade B — promising. Repeated, well-designed randomised, placebo-controlled human trials — mostly from the Imperial College London reproductive endocrinology group and Harvard/MGH — show kisspeptin reliably raises LH pulsatility and secretion, and separately show it measurably alters brain connectivity and psychometric scores related to sexual arousal, mood and reward in men. That is real, repeated human data, which is more than almost any other compound on this site's peptides hub can claim. It stays at Grade B rather than A because every trial measures a biomarker or functional/psychometric readout (LH pulses, fMRI connectivity, mood scores) under short, controlled, clinically supervised dosing — none has run long enough or measured a hard outcome (restored fertility, treated diagnosed hypoactive sexual desire disorder, sustained libido change) to clear the bar for an established therapy. How we grade evidence.
Side effects & safety
- Reported in the published trials
- Generally well tolerated at the doses and durations tested, with no serious adverse events reported across the reproductive-endocrine and neuroimaging trials. Mild injection-site reactions have been noted with subcutaneous dosing.
- The honest caveat
- "Well tolerated" describes single or short-duration, clinically supervised dosing in research settings, not repeated self-injection over weeks or months. No trial has generated safety data for that use pattern, which is the pattern products sold online actually assume.
Interactions with medications
The section most longevity sites skip. If you take prescription medication, read this before anything else on the page.
Kisspeptin acts directly on the reproductive hormone axis; combining it with other hormonal therapies has not been studied outside controlled research protocols and could plausibly amplify or blunt intended effects.
No drug-interaction studies exist outside the tightly controlled research settings described above.
Is Kisspeptin-10 legal where you live?
Regulatory status is tracked per market and reviewed on the date shown. Where a compound is not authorised, this site does not link to sellers.
Not an approved drug for any indication and not lawfully marketed as a dietary supplement. Used only in ethically approved academic research protocols.
Source: US Food and Drug Administration
No UK marketing authorisation as a medicine and no permitted route to sell it as a food supplement; used in academic research (much of it UK-based) under ethics approval.
Source: MHRA
No EU marketing authorisation and no novel-food authorisation. There is no lawful consumer route of supply.
Source: European Medicines Agency
Germany applies the EU position: no authorised medicinal product and no permitted supplement use.
Source: BfArM / European Medicines Agency
Aucune autorisation de mise sur le marché et aucun statut de nouvel aliment. Il n'existe aucune voie légale d'approvisionnement.
Source: European Commission / ANSM
Sin autorización de comercialización ni condición de nuevo alimento. No existe una vía legal de suministro.
Source: European Commission / AEMPS
Dosing & timing
These are single-visit, clinically monitored research doses used to study the reproductive axis and brain responses — not a validated outpatient regimen for any use.
No published trial has established a safe or effective dose for repeated, unsupervised, self-administered use, which is the only way this compound is actually sold to consumers.
Questions people actually ask
Is kisspeptin-10 legal in the United States?
It is not an approved drug for any indication and is not lawfully marketed as a dietary supplement — it is a synthetic peptide hormone, not a food-supplement ingredient, and its sale for human use falls outside FDA-approved channels regardless of a 'research use only' label.
Does kisspeptin actually boost libido or fertility in real use?
The human trials show it stimulates LH secretion and alters brain activity tied to sexual and emotional processing under short, supervised, clinical dosing — genuinely interesting reproductive-endocrine science. No trial has tested whether it treats a diagnosed condition like low libido or infertility as an outcome, so that specific real-world claim is not established.
Why does kisspeptin have so much more human data than most research peptides?
It is a genuinely important upstream regulator of human reproduction, and academic reproductive-endocrinology groups (notably Imperial College London and Harvard/MGH) have run it in dozens of ethically approved, hospital-supervised trials to understand fertility disorders and puberty — a very different research pathway from a peptide being sold directly to consumers with no institutional oversight.
Is it safe to self-inject kisspeptin bought online?
There is no published safety data for repeated, unsupervised, self-administered dosing of any duration — every human trial involved single or short-course dosing under continuous clinical monitoring in a research unit. That, plus the usual purity and sterility concerns for an unregulated injectable, means real-world self-use carries risks the trial data cannot speak to.