Methodology & standards

PeptideHormone is an independent, research-grade reference on the peptide hormone system — the endogenous signals that run the body and the engineered molecules redrawing the edge of research. It is a reference, not a store and not a clinic: no products, no storefront, no sponsored conclusions. The whole point of the project is to be the calm, checkable layer in a category that is loud with marketing and thin on rigor.

That only means something if the rigor is visible. Everything below is the method you can hold the rest of the site to.

Every monograph’s reference list was pulled live from PubMed through the NCBI E-utilities API, then vetted by hand for topical relevance. We lead with review articles and consensus statements rather than single primary studies — the goal is the settled center of a literature, not the most exciting outlier in it. Titles, journals, and years are carried through as PubMed returns them, and every citation exposes its PMID, which resolves at pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov. A claim you can’t click through to isn’t a claim we make.

One honest limit: monograph mechanisms summarize public literature, and summary means simplification. Active research is compressed into a few sentences; where a field is genuinely unsettled, we say so rather than manufacture a verdict.

Not all “peptide” claims are backed by the same weight of data, so we don’t present them as if they are. Every molecule carries an evidence tier — a filterable rigor badge — placing it on a five-rung ladder from settled science to sparse anecdote. The tier grades the strength of the evidence, not how interesting or promising the molecule is.

Alongside the evidence tier, each entry is tagged by what kind of molecule it actually is — because “peptide” spans everything from a hormone your gut secretes to a compound that has never seen a registered trial:

• Endogenous — a signal the body produces itself — the native biology the rest of the catalog is measured against.
• Analog — an engineered molecule built on an endogenous hormone, tuned for potency, half-life, or receptor selectivity.
• Research — a community "research peptide" that sits outside the approved-drug system — where the evidence is often thinnest and the claims loudest.

Reading the two tags together is the point. An endogenous molecule graded Established and a research molecule graded Limited are both in the catalog — the labels tell you, at a glance, how far to trust what follows.

This is reference material for understanding biology. It is not medical advice, not dosing guidance, not a diagnosis, and not a recommendation to obtain or use any compound. Nothing here substitutes for a licensed clinician who knows your situation. Regulatory status varies by jurisdiction and by whether a given compound is handled as an approved drug or a research reagent — a distinction that is your responsibility to check, not ours to wave away.

We hold this line deliberately. The moment a reference starts telling you what to take, it has stopped being a reference.

PeptideHormone sells nothing and hosts no storefront. There are no sponsored monographs and no conclusions bent to a seller’s interest — the incentive is to be correct, not to move product. If that ever changes — if any funding, affiliate, or commercial relationship enters the picture — it will be disclosed here, plainly, before it touches a single word of the catalog.

A reference is only as good as its willingness to be wrong in public. If you find an error — a misread mechanism, a stale reference, a mis-graded tier — tell us and we will fix it or show our work.