How do you reconstitute AOD-9604?

Swab the stoppers of the AOD-9604 vial and the bacteriostatic water, draw the volume of water your prescriber or pharmacy specified, and inject it slowly down the inside wall of the peptide vial. Then gently swirl until the powder dissolves into a clear solution. Don't shake it. Label the vial with the concentration and date, and store it in the fridge.

How much bacteriostatic water do I add to a 10mg vial of AOD-9604?

Use the volume on your pharmacy label or the one your prescriber gave you. The water volume doesn't change how much peptide is in the vial, only the concentration. With 1 mL each unit holds 100 mcg, with 2 mL it's 50 mcg, and with 3 mL it's about 33.33 mcg. More water makes small amounts easier to measure accurately.

How much bacteriostatic water for a 2mg, 5mg, or 6mg AOD-9604 vial?

Again, follow your label. The chart in this guide shows the concentration for 1, 2, and 3 mL with each vial size. For example, a 5mg vial with 2 mL of water gives 2.5 mg/mL, so each unit on a U-100 syringe holds 25 mcg.

How long does reconstituted AOD-9604 last?

Published stability data for AOD-9604 in solution is limited. As a sterility rule, CDC and USP guidance says a punctured multi-dose vial should be discarded within 28 days unless the manufacturer or pharmacy states a different date. If your label says less, use the shorter date.

Why is my AOD-9604 cloudy after reconstitution?

Cloudiness can mean the peptide didn't dissolve, has degraded, or is contaminated. Don't inject a cloudy solution. Contact the pharmacy or supplier. Surface foam from adding water too quickly is different, and it usually settles after the vial rests upright in the fridge for a while.

Can I use sterile water instead of bacteriostatic water for AOD-9604?

Sterile water for injection has no preservative, so it's meant for single use. For a vial you'll draw from repeatedly, bacteriostatic water is the usual choice because its preservative limits bacterial growth. Follow your pharmacy's instructions, and don't use benzyl alcohol products in newborns.

Is AOD-9604 FDA approved?

No. AOD-9604 has never been approved as a drug by the FDA. Its development as an obesity medication ended after trial results didn't support it, and FDA's compounding advisory committee voted against adding it to the 503A bulk substances list in December 2024.

How to Reconstitute AOD-9604: Mixing Instructions, Vial Chart, and Storage

Q: Does AOD-9604 need to be refrigerated?

Once reconstituted, yes. Keep it in the fridge at 2 to 8°C and don't freeze it. Before mixing, follow the storage directions on the vial. Freeze-dried peptides are generally kept cold, dry, and away from light.

You've got a small glass vial with a white puck of powder at the bottom, a bottle of bacteriostatic water, and a label that says "AOD-9604." Now you're wondering how to turn one into something you can actually measure. If that's where you are, this guide is for you.

Here's the thing: reconstituting AOD-9604 is mostly arithmetic and patience. The hard part isn't the mixing itself. It's knowing how much water to add, what that does to the concentration, and how to read the result on a syringe. We'll walk through all of it, including a vial chart for the 2mg, 5mg, 6mg, and 10mg sizes people search for most.

One thing up front: this guide explains the mixing and the math. It does not tell you how much AOD-9604 to take. That's a conversation for you and a qualified clinician.

What AOD-9604 Actually Is (and Its Regulatory Status)

AOD-9604 is a lab-made peptide based on a small piece of the tail end of human growth hormone. Think of it as a snippet cut from a much longer molecule. It was developed in Australia in the late 1990s and 2000s as a potential obesity drug, with the idea that this fragment might influence fat metabolism without the broader effects of full growth hormone.

Let's be honest about how that story ended. AOD-9604 went into a larger, placebo-controlled human trial for weight loss, and it didn't produce the kind of meaningful results that would support approval. Development as an obesity drug was dropped in 2007. It has never been approved as a medicine by the FDA or any other major regulator.

In the US, its status for compounding pharmacies is also restrictive. FDA lists AOD-9604 among bulk substances that were nominated for compounding and later withdrawn, and notes concerns about immunogenicity and peptide impurities (FDA bulk drug substances list). In December 2024, FDA's Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee reviewed it and voted against recommending it for the list of substances 503A pharmacies can compound with. It's also on the World Anti-Doping Agency's prohibited list as a growth hormone fragment, which matters if you compete in tested sports.

What does that mean for you? Much of the AOD-9604 sold online is labelled "for research use only, not for human consumption." Products like that aren't made under the quality controls that apply to approved drugs, so purity, sterility, and even the actual amount in the vial can vary. We don't recommend buying peptides this way. If you're considering AOD-9604, talk to a licensed clinician first, and know that the evidence behind it is thin.

What You'll Need Before You Start

Gather everything before you touch the vial. It makes the process calmer and cleaner.

You'll need your AOD-9604 vial, bacteriostatic water (sterile water with 0.9% benzyl alcohol added as a preservative, supplied in multi-dose vials; see the DailyMed label), a handful of alcohol swabs, a clean syringe for adding the water, and U-100 insulin syringes for measuring afterwards. A sharps container belongs on the list too, even if it's not glamorous.

A quick note on syringes. A standard U-100 insulin syringe holds 1 mL at most (100 units). If you plan to add 2 or 3 mL of water, you'll either draw more than once with the same sterile syringe or use a larger 3 mL syringe for the mixing step. Either works. Just don't reuse a syringe that's touched anything non-sterile. If you're unsure which syringe sizes fit your situation, our peptide calculator shows how the numbers change between 0.3 mL, 0.5 mL, and 1 mL syringes.

Why bacteriostatic water instead of plain sterile water? The preservative helps keep bacteria from growing in the vial after you've punctured the rubber stopper several times. Plain sterile water has no preservative, so it's meant for single use. One more safety point from the label itself: benzyl alcohol must not be used in newborns.

How to Reconstitute AOD-9604, Step by Step

Here's the whole process. Read it through once before you start.

Step 1: Wash up and set up. Wash your hands with soap and water, wipe down a clean, flat surface, and lay out your supplies. Let the AOD-9604 vial sit at room temperature for a few minutes if it came out of the fridge, so condensation doesn't form on the stopper while you work.

Step 2: Swab both stoppers. Pop the plastic caps off the AOD-9604 vial and the bacteriostatic water. Wipe each rubber stopper with a fresh alcohol swab and let them air dry. Don't blow on them or fan them. Wet alcohol on the stopper can get pushed into the vial by the needle.

Step 3: Draw the water. Pull back the plunger to the volume of water you plan to add, which fills the syringe with air. Push that air into the bacteriostatic water vial, turn the vial upside down, and draw the water. The extra air makes the draw easier. Check for large air bubbles and tap them to the top.

Step 4: Add the water slowly, down the glass. Insert the needle into the AOD-9604 vial at an angle so the tip rests against the inside wall. Press the plunger slowly and let the water trickle down the side. You're not trying to hit the powder directly. A fast jet of liquid onto a delicate peptide can cause foaming and may damage it.

Step 5: Swirl, don't shake. Remove the needle, then gently swirl the vial or roll it between your palms. Most lyophilized (freeze-dried) peptides dissolve within a minute or two. If a bit of powder clings to the glass, give it a few more minutes in the fridge and swirl again. Shaking is the one thing to avoid.

Step 6: Inspect and label. Hold the vial up to the light. You're looking for a clear, colourless solution with no floating specks or haze. Then write three things on the vial: the peptide, the concentration, and today's date. Future you, digging through the fridge at 7am, will be grateful.

AOD-9604 Reconstitution Chart by Vial Size

This is the table most people come here for. It shows what happens to the concentration when you add different volumes of bacteriostatic water to the common vial sizes, and how much AOD-9604 sits in each unit on a U-100 insulin syringe.

Vial	BAC water added	Concentration	Per 1 unit	Per 10 units (0.1 mL)
2 mg	1 mL	2 mg/mL (2000 mcg/mL)	20 mcg	200 mcg
2 mg	2 mL	1 mg/mL (1000 mcg/mL)	10 mcg	100 mcg
2 mg	3 mL	0.667 mg/mL (666.7 mcg/mL)	6.67 mcg	66.7 mcg
5 mg	1 mL	5 mg/mL (5000 mcg/mL)	50 mcg	500 mcg
5 mg	2 mL	2.5 mg/mL (2500 mcg/mL)	25 mcg	250 mcg
5 mg	3 mL	1.667 mg/mL (1666.7 mcg/mL)	16.67 mcg	166.7 mcg
6 mg	1 mL	6 mg/mL (6000 mcg/mL)	60 mcg	600 mcg
6 mg	2 mL	3 mg/mL (3000 mcg/mL)	30 mcg	300 mcg
6 mg	3 mL	2 mg/mL (2000 mcg/mL)	20 mcg	200 mcg
10 mg	1 mL	10 mg/mL (10000 mcg/mL)	100 mcg	1000 mcg
10 mg	2 mL	5 mg/mL (5000 mcg/mL)	50 mcg	500 mcg
10 mg	3 mL	3.333 mg/mL (3333.3 mcg/mL)	33.33 mcg	333.3 mcg

A few things jump out once you see it laid out. Adding more water makes each unit weaker, which means you draw more units for the same amount. That can make small measurements easier to read. Adding less water makes the solution stronger, so each tick on the syringe carries more peptide and a small misread matters more.

Take the 10mg vial as an example. With 1 mL of water, every single unit holds 100 mcg. With 3 mL, every unit holds 33.33 mcg. Same vial, very different precision. There's no single "correct" volume. The right one is whatever your prescriber or pharmacy tells you, and the label on a pharmacy-prepared vial should say so.

Understanding Concentration Without the Headache

Let's make the math feel less like homework. Concentration is simply how much peptide is dissolved in each millilitre of liquid. The formula is one line:

Concentration (mg/mL) = mg of peptide in the vial ÷ mL of water added

Then, because a U-100 insulin syringe holds 100 units per mL, one unit is always 0.01 mL. That's the whole trick. Everything else is multiplication.

Here's a worked example, and we want to be clear that the dose in it is just a number for the math, not a suggestion. If your prescriber told you to draw 250 mcg from a 5mg vial mixed with 2 mL of bacteriostatic water, the concentration is 2.5 mg/mL, or 2500 mcg/mL. Each unit on the syringe holds 25 mcg. So 250 mcg works out to 0.1 mL, which is 10 units on the syringe.

Now watch how the same 250 mcg changes with a different vial. With a 10mg vial mixed with 3 mL, it's 7.5 units. With a 10mg vial mixed with only 1 mL, it's 2.5 units, which is hard to measure accurately on most syringes. That's the practical reason people choose more water for bigger vials.

If you'd rather not do this by hand every time (and honestly, who would?), plug your numbers into the AOD-9604 dosage calculator. Enter the vial size, the water you added, and the amount on your prescription, and it shows the units to draw.

How Much Is in 0.1 mL?

This question comes up a lot because 0.1 mL is a tidy number: it's exactly 10 units on a U-100 syringe. The last column of the chart above answers it for every vial and water combination. For a 5mg vial with 2 mL of water, 10 units holds 250 mcg. For a 2mg vial with 2 mL of water, 10 units holds 100 mcg.

The easiest way to use this is as a sanity check. Before you draw, ask yourself, "roughly how much is in 10 units of my vial?" If your answer and the number on your syringe don't line up with what you were told, stop and recheck the math.

Does AOD-9604 Need to Be Refrigerated?

Short answer: once it's mixed, yes. Before it's mixed, follow the label.

Because AOD-9604 isn't an approved drug, there's no FDA-reviewed label with official storage instructions. What you'll see instead is the manufacturer's or pharmacy's own guidance. Freeze-dried peptides are generally kept cold, dry, and away from light before mixing, and many suppliers recommend the fridge or freezer for longer storage. Whatever your vial says is what you should follow.

After reconstitution, store the vial upright in the fridge at 2 to 8°C (36 to 46°F). Don't freeze it and don't leave it in a warm car or on a sunny windowsill. Keep it in its box or a drawer in the fridge to limit light exposure.

How long does it last once mixed? Here's where we have to be careful. The stability of AOD-9604 in solution isn't well documented in published research. What we can point to is the general rule for multi-dose vials: once a preserved vial has been punctured, CDC injection safety guidance and USP sterile compounding standards say to date it and discard it within 28 days unless the manufacturer or pharmacy gives a different date. That's a sterility rule, not a potency guarantee, but it's a sensible outer limit. If your pharmacy label gives a shorter beyond-use date, the label wins.

AOD-9604 Cloudy After Reconstitution? What It Means

A properly reconstituted peptide solution should look like water: clear and colourless. If yours looks milky, hazy, or has particles floating in it, don't inject it.

Cloudiness can mean the peptide didn't dissolve properly, that it has degraded or clumped together, or that the vial is contaminated. You can't tell which just by looking, and none of those are things you want under your skin. The safe move is to set the vial aside, don't use it, and contact the pharmacy or supplier that provided it.

There's one situation that's usually harmless. If you added water too fast, you may see foam or tiny bubbles sitting on the surface. That isn't the same as cloudiness. Let the vial rest upright in the fridge for 15 to 30 minutes and the bubbles should settle. If the liquid underneath is clear, the foam was just trapped air. If it stays hazy after resting, treat it as cloudy.

A little powder stuck to the glass right after mixing is also common. Gentle swirling usually takes care of it. If powder won't dissolve after a reasonable wait, that's another sign to check with whoever supplied the vial.

Common AOD-9604 Mixing Mistakes

The most common mistake is shaking. It feels natural, like mixing a protein shake, but vigorous shaking creates foam and can damage peptide chains. Swirl gently and give it time.

The second is losing track of your concentration. If you mix one vial with 2 mL and the next with 3 mL, your units change even though the peptide is the same. This is exactly where labelling the vial saves you. The concentration should be written on the glass, not stored in your memory.

The third is mixing up units and milligrams. "10" on an insulin syringe means 10 units, which is 0.1 mL. It does not mean 10 mcg or 10 mg. Nearly every dosing error we hear about starts with that confusion.

And finally, reusing supplies. Every needle that goes into a vial should be new and sterile. The preservative in bacteriostatic water helps, but it's not a force field.

Keeping Track of Vials, Dates, and Concentrations

Once you have more than one vial going, or you're following a protocol your clinician set up alongside other medications, the details start to pile up. When did you mix this vial? How much water went in? How many draws are left before the 28-day mark?

This is the kind of thing PeptideKit was built for. You can log each protocol and dose, get reminders so you don't double up or skip, and use the built-in reconstitution calculator so the concentration you wrote on the vial matches what you're drawing. Your data stays on your device and syncs through your own iCloud, with no account to create.