What this does
Divide the milligrams in the vial by the millilitres of water for concentration. Divide the dose by that for the volume to draw. Multiply by 100 for the mark on a U-100 syringe. A 5 mg tesamorelin vial in 1 mL is 5 mg/mL, so the 2 mg used in the pivotal trials is a 0.4 mL draw, or 40 units.
The vial size above is the one Peptriva ships, read from the live listing. Change it if yours differs. The dose stays whatever you set — this tool does not suggest one.
What size vial does tesamorelin come in?
The stocked vial is 5 mg of lyophilized powder. Tesamorelin is also supplied at 2 mg in its licensed pharmaceutical form, so a certificate quoting 2 mg is not necessarily wrong — it is a different product.
Water volume is a choice, not a specification. Here is the same vial at four volumes:
| Water added | Concentration | Units for a 1 mg draw |
|---|---|---|
| 1 mL | 5 mg/mL | 20.0 units |
| 2 mL | 2.5 mg/mL | 40.0 units |
| 3 mL | 1.66667 mg/mL | 60.0 units |
| 5 mL | 1 mg/mL | 100.0 units |
The vial holds the same 5 mg in every row. Water changes the concentration and the size of the draw. It does not change how many doses are in the vial.
What dose did the trials use?
This is the unusual part. Tesamorelin has a real published figure: 2 mg daily by subcutaneous injection, which is what the pivotal Phase III program administered over 26 weeks in 412 adults.
We report that because it was measured and published, not as a recommendation. The trial population was adults with HIV-associated abdominal fat accumulation, which is the licensed indication and not the reason most people search for this. The tesamorelin dosage page sets out the full protocol, and tesamorelin before and after covers what the 26 weeks actually produced.
Run 2 mg against a 5 mg vial in 1 mL and the tool returns a 0.4 mL draw. That is a useful sanity check on the arithmetic, because it is one of the few places in this catalog where a published number exists to check against.
The trap on this one: which tesamorelin
Two masses circulate for this compound and only one of them is right. Finished tesamorelin — trans-3-hexenoyl-GHRH(1-44)-NH2 — is about 5,136 Da. The bare GHRH(1-44)-NH2 backbone computes to roughly 5,040 Da from the sequence.
A certificate reading near 5,136 is the finished molecule. Neither figure has anything to do with the vial’s milligram content, and neither changes the arithmetic above. It matters when you are checking identity rather than dose — see how to read a COA.
Frequently asked questions
How do you reconstitute a 5 mg tesamorelin vial?
Add bacteriostatic water down the vial wall and swirl rather than shake. The volume is your choice: 1 mL gives 5 mg/mL, 2 mL gives 2.5 mg/mL. The vial holds the same 5 mg either way, so water changes the size of each draw, not the number of doses.
What dose of tesamorelin did the trials use?
2 mg daily by subcutaneous injection, over 26 weeks, in 412 adults with HIV-associated abdominal fat accumulation. That is the published protocol for the licensed indication. It is reported here because it was measured, not as a recommendation.
How many units is 2 mg of tesamorelin?
It depends entirely on your water volume. At 5 mg in 1 mL the concentration is 5 mg/mL, so 2 mg is 0.4 mL, which is 40 units on a U-100 insulin syringe. At 2 mL it would be 80 units.
Does a smaller syringe change the units?
No. Every insulin syringe sold in the US is U-100, so one unit is 0.01 mL on a 1 mL, 0.5 mL or 0.3 mL barrel alike. The smaller barrels hold fewer units and print finer marks; they do not have smaller ones.
References
- American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP). Handbook on Injectable Drugs: Benzyl alcohol preservative compatibility and stability data. https://www.ashp.org/products-and-services/database-tools/handbook-on-injectable-drugs
- United States Pharmacopeia. (2024). Bacteriostatic Water for Injection — monograph and in-use stability guidance. USP-NF. (See institutional access.) https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412963855.n1200
- Wang, W. (1999). Instability, stabilization, and formulation of liquid protein pharmaceuticals. International Journal of Pharmaceutics, 185(2), 129–188. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0378-5173(99)00152-0
The arithmetic needs no citation; the diluent and stability guidance does.