Reconstituting and Measuring Peptides and Growth Hormone

Most peptides (MT-II, HGH, MGF, GHRP, HCG) can be reconstituted with sterile water or more commonly with Bacteriostatic Water (BW) which is sterile water with 0.9% Benzyl Alcohol added and maximizes shelf life. BW is readily available and preferred. Some HGH comes with water provided but best to discard this and use BW as generally the supplied water is intended for single use application only.

One important exclusion to the above is IGF-1. IGF requires reconstituting with 0.6% Acetic Acid (AA) or 10 mM HCl. 0.6% AA provides the maximum shelf life for the product and is preferred.

Before reconstituting we need to determine how much dilutent to add to the peptide. This will vary upon your own preference for measuring the amount for injection of the reconstituted hormone. I will add at the bottom of this post a guide for this purpose.

So we now have our peptide in a lyophilized powder form and our intended dilutent so let's reconstitute it. Using a regular 3cc pin with 23-25 gauge needle draw up your required dilutent amount and proceed to add it to the vial with your lyophilized powder. This process needs to be done with care. I suggest tilting the vial on a roughly 45 degree angle and very gently adding in the dilutent allowing it to slowly trickle down the side of the vial and then reaching the lyophilized powder at which time it should dissolve into the dilutent. DO NOT squirt your dilutent directly into the vial or onto the lyophilized powder. It might not fully dissolve so again very gently swirl the vial in one direction only until you have a good mix. DO NOT shake the vial or agitate it violently in any way during this process as again this could conceivably degrade your peptide.

Most peptide injections are done using an insulin syringe. Measurements on these are in International Units (iu's). This is a measurement of the biological effect and applied to your hormone as a standard accepted "Internationally" but don't get too hung up on that excepting to know it can be applied with surety to your peptides.

So if your using a U100 insulin syringe this means 1iu is 1/100th of a ml or 1ml = 100iu's. Peptides are generally packaged and labelled in terms of micrograms (mcg's) which is 1/1000 of a milligram. So 1mg = 1000mcg's.

Let's use an example where you have 1mg of peptide which is reasonably common. This then means you have 1000mcgs of that peptide. If you add 1ml of dilutent to that you now have a solution that will provide you with 10mcg's per IU. If you add 2mls of dilutent your solution becomes 5mcgs per 1iu and so on. Here is a chart for quick reference]
1000mcg/1mL = 10 mcg per IU
1000mcg/2mL = 5.0 mcg per IU
1000mcg/3mL = 3.3 mcg per IU
1000mcg/4mL = 2.5 mcg per IU

Going from above if you have a 2mg vial of lyophilized powder then the equations changes by a multiple of 2 as below]
2000mcg/1mL = 20 mcg per IU
2000mcg/2mL = 10 mcg per IU
2000mcg/3mL = 6.6 mcg per IU
2000mcg/4mL = 5 mcg per IU

A simple reference to refer back to is the following]
Peptide amount in mcgs / dilutent volume in ml/100 = mcg per IU

Should probably add in here with HGH specifically it is often shipped in kits/vials labelled as 5 or 10iu's per vial rather than in micrograms. The calculations are the same but to expand on this if you have a 10iu vial of HGH and add 1ml of BW to it you now have in solution with 10iu's per 1ml. We know from our previous calculations that a U100 insulin syringe holds 1ml of liquid. So to measure your HGH in this example divide the total amount of dilutent by the total IU's of HGH and what we get is 1iu of HGH each 10 tick on the insulin syringe. Chart again below for easier reference]
1ml = 100 IU's

100 IU (amount of dilutent) / 10 IU (amount of HGH) = 10 for each IU of HGH

If adding 2mls BW]
200 IU / 10 IU = 20

Most peptide injections are done subcutaneously (sub-q) but can also be done intramuscularly (IM). IGF is again the exception here as this peptide should be injected IM otherwise I prefer sub-q for most others.