Kisspeptin-10What the studies show

Q: What kind of evidence exists for kisspeptin-10?

Small human studies. Small, short human infusion studies, most with kisspeptin-54 rather than kisspeptin-10, that show a clear hormonal effect and early brain-imaging findings; no trial of repeated use and no approved form.

The signal at the top of the reproductive axis, found because children without its receptor never reach puberty, and studied only in small infusion trials.

5 min read · Small human studies · Updated November 2026

In short

Name: kisspeptin-10 (sold by Progression Labs as Kisspeptin-10)
Evidence: Small human studies
Bottom line: Small, short human infusion studies, most with kisspeptin-54 rather than kisspeptin-10, that show a clear hormonal effect and early brain-imaging findings; no trial of repeated use and no approved form.

Before you read this

This guide explains what published studies found. That is all it is.

It is not medical advice and it is not instructions for using anything. Where a dose appears, we are reporting what a named study gave the people or animals in it — a fact about the study, not an instruction to you.

The compounds here are not approved by the FDA for use in people and are sold for laboratory research only. A study tells you what happened to the subjects in it; it does not tell you what would happen to you. Talk to a doctor first.

What it is

Kisspeptin is a family of peptides cut from one parent protein, the product of the KISS1 gene, named by its discoverers in Hershey, Pennsylvania, after the local chocolate. The full peptide is 54 amino acids long; kisspeptin-10 is the last ten, the piece every shorter form shares and the part that binds the receptor on its own ¹. In 2003 two groups reported that people born with a broken kisspeptin receptor never go through puberty, which placed kisspeptin at the top of the reproductive axis: it is the signal that tells the hypothalamus to release GnRH, which tells the pituitary to release LH and FSH, which tell the gonads to make testosterone or estrogen ¹. Most human studies have used kisspeptin-54, the long form. Kisspeptin-10 has been given to fewer people, and the two behave differently in the body, chiefly because kisspeptin-10 is cleared from blood within minutes ².

The studies below call this molecule kisspeptin-10. Progression Labs sells it as Kisspeptin-10; the guide uses the store's name and the papers use theirs.

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LH and testosterone in men

The first human study was published in 2005 by a group at Imperial College London: healthy men received intravenous infusions of kisspeptin-54 at increasing doses, and LH, FSH and testosterone rose in proportion, with LH climbing within minutes of the start ³. Kisspeptin-10 followed in 2011. In healthy men, a single intravenous dose raised LH within minutes, and a continuous infusion increased the frequency of LH pulses and raised testosterone, the pattern expected if kisspeptin drives the pulse generator for GnRH ². These were laboratory sessions of hours, in groups of fewer than a dozen men, and they established what the peptide does rather than what it is for.

Desensitisation

The axis does not simply keep responding. In 2009, women with hypothalamic amenorrhea — periods stopped because the hypothalamus had gone quiet — were given kisspeptin-54 under the skin twice a day for two weeks; the LH response to the first injection was large, and by the end of the fortnight it had nearly vanished, which the authors called tachyphylaxis ⁴. Continuous kisspeptin can turn the axis down rather than up. That is why the pattern of exposure is the central design question in every kisspeptin trial, and why a result from a single infusion says little about repeated use.

Sexual desire: the JAMA Network Open trials

Kisspeptin receptors are also found in the limbic brain, the circuitry of emotion and sexual motivation, which led the Imperial group to test the peptide in people with hypoactive sexual desire disorder. In 2022, 32 premenopausal women with the disorder received a 75-minute infusion of kisspeptin-54 or placebo on separate visits while being scanned by MRI as they watched erotic and non-erotic videos; kisspeptin increased activity in brain regions tied to sexual processing, and the size of the change correlated with lower self-rated sexual aversion ⁵. A companion trial published in 2023 did the same in 32 men with the disorder and added a measure of penile tumescence: kisspeptin increased it during the videos by up to 56 percent relative to placebo and raised self-reported happiness about sex ⁶. Both were single-dose laboratory sessions. No trial has yet tested whether repeated kisspeptin changes desire in daily life.

What is not known

Every trial above is small, a few dozen people at most, and most used kisspeptin-54 rather than kisspeptin-10, given by vein in a laboratory. Kisspeptin-10 lasts a few minutes in blood, so the response to a single injection is brief and the response to repeated injections is uncertain, given the desensitisation seen with the long form ⁴. Side effects in the infusion studies were few, but the studies were hours long. Kisspeptin is not an approved drug for anything, in any form.

What these studies are, and aren't

Small human studies. Small, short human infusion studies, most with kisspeptin-54 rather than kisspeptin-10, that show a clear hormonal effect and early brain-imaging findings; no trial of repeated use and no approved form.