PERSONAL EXPERIENCES / FIRMER WARNINGS
What have people felt after using PT-141?
Bremelanotide is a medicine that can affect the wish for sex. You can read people’s experiences here, then compare those accounts with trial findings and warnings about harm.
What’s worth remembering about these accounts?
PT-141 users describe both stronger desire and unpleasant side effects. The accounts can help you ask questions, but can’t predict your response.
The medicine’s approved use concerns a distressing loss of desire before a woman’s periods end. Treating men and treating other problems fall outside that approval.
Some accounts describe wanting sex more or feeling more excited during sex. Some people find touch more pleasurable, while others notice no benefit.
People also mention nausea, headaches, warmth, and tiredness, or soreness where the shot went in. Other accounts mention tingling or a darker color in skin.
Counting mentions doesn’t tell you how many people had each effect. Trials offer firmer evidence of nausea and briefly raised blood pressure.
Medicine warnings also cover heart disease and darkening that may remain. Products offered for experiments add doubt about what’s inside and how pure the contents are.
Which changes do people report most often?
People using bremelanotide for research have described these experiences themselves. These experiences haven’t been checked in trials and aren’t results of a study that compared treatments.
You can’t tell which users had a doctor overseeing their use. “Frequently” means the effect comes up repeatedly; the word gives you no measured chance of having that effect.
Desire and pleasure. Wanting sex more is very commonly reported. That phrase describes repeated accounts, rather than a measured share of users.
Feeling more sexually excited and finding touch more pleasurable are frequently reported. Because these accounts don’t compare people who received the drug with people who received a treatment without the drug, you can’t pin the reported benefit on the medicine with confidence.
An orgasm, the climax of sex, that becomes easier or feels stronger is frequently reported. Greater pleasure also comes up, but people’s experiences differ.
Men frequently report an erection without touch or plans for sex. Those accounts concern male use that hasn’t received approval.
People frequently report a delay before sexual interest grows, followed by a lasting effect. The delay can make planning sex inconvenient for some users.
Greater emotional closeness with a partner during sex is occasionally reported. A trial hasn’t established that personal feeling as a treatment benefit.
Unpleasant effects. Nausea, feeling queasy or sick to your stomach, is very commonly reported. A warm, red face, headaches, and soreness around the shot site are frequently reported.
Tingling, pins and needles, tiredness, sleepiness, and stronger skin feelings are occasionally reported. Those accounts can’t prove a cause or give you a measured risk.
After frequent use, people occasionally report darkening of skin or changes in gums, moles, and freckles. Some people say their normal color didn’t fully return.
No benefit is occasionally reported, sometimes while side effects still occur. These accounts leave your own likely response uncertain.
Which health concerns have medical evidence behind them?
The firmer warnings come from medicine instructions and trials. Some other concerns come from reviews or tests of illegal products.
Approval has a narrow scope. Treatment covers a woman before menopause, when periods stop, if losing previously normal desire causes distress. Low interest must extend across partners and settings; men’s treatment, treatment after menopause, and improving sexual performance fall outside approval. [7] [15] [3]
Blood pressure can briefly rise. PT-141 can raise pressure and slightly slow the pulse. Safety tests and pressure checks support warnings that rule out use when high pressure isn’t controlled or disease in the heart or blood vessels is known. [7] [16] [17]
Nausea can lead women to stop. Nausea occurred in about forty percent of women during longer trials. Vomiting occurred too, and nausea led some women to end treatment. [4] [18] [3]
Darkening might not fade completely. Repeated frequent use can darken the face, breasts, gums, freckles, or moles. The change may be greater when your skin is already dark, and the color may never return completely to normal. [7]
Liver injury is rare but reported. A government review reports slightly higher amounts of liver enzymes, chemicals that help liver cells do their work, in blood tests. Those small blood-test changes differ from the rare cases of liver damage causing clear illness that the review also describes. [19]
Illegal products add risks of their own. Testing of illegal products detected both bremelanotide and melanotan-II, the earlier tanning drug. Those products lack the required medicine checks for drug contents, strength, and purity. [20]
A separate report describes serious harm to a person who injected the earlier tanning drug. That case involved an unchecked product, rather than a trial of bremelanotide. [21]
Eating and weight also changed in tests. Brain cells reached by PT-141 take part in hunger control. During research with frequent treatment, women’s food intake fell and their body weight decreased; these results don’t give the drug approval for treating weight problems. [22] [23]
Safety in pregnancy and nursing is unknown. Human trials don’t establish safety for pregnant women or women nursing a baby. Missing tests leave that question unanswered, rather than giving you proof of safety.
How did a tanning experiment lead to a desire medicine?
PT-141 came from research on melanotan-II, an earlier tanning drug. Sexual effects noticed in that work gave researchers a different question to test.
Nose sprays were tested first in men struggling with erections and women with sexual concerns. Later work tested women troubled by low desire, using shots rather than sprays.
In June 2019, the FDA approved treatment with bremelanotide before menopause for a specific loss of desire. The FDA is the United States agency that reviews medicines; its approval covers that specific loss of desire, without approving other uses. [12] [24] [15] [3] [7] [25] [1]