What is the evidence?
Every compound in the register, grouped by how strong the evidence actually is. Strongest first. This is the single most useful thing to know before reading anything else about a compound.
Large randomised controlled trials in people, the standard a regulator needs before approving a medicine. This is the strongest evidence available for anything.
Read the trial, and check the comparator, the duration and who funded it.
Large human trials exist and have reported, but no regulator has yet completed an assessment. Promising is not the same as approved.
Watch for the regulatory decision rather than the press release.
Large human trials are running but not finished. Any figures circulating are from earlier phases or interim looks.
Treat specific percentages with real caution.
People have been studied and the studies disagree. That usually means any real effect is small enough to be swamped by trial design and chance.
Contradictory is its own answer, and not an encouraging one.
Studied in people, never approved. Sometimes the effect was too small, sometimes safety concerns emerged. Either way the programme that would have set a safe dose was not finished.
Ask what the trials found besides the headline effect.
Some human work exists but it is small and was never carried through to licensing.
Early human data is a reason to run trials, not a reason to act.
Decades of real prescribing in one regulatory system, without the controlled trial data Western regulators require. Long use tells you it has not obviously harmed people; it does not establish effect size.
A real critique of Western trial bias exists here. It also does not create missing data.
The positive findings come almost entirely from the group that developed the compound. Independent replication is how science catches error and enthusiasm.
Ask whether anyone else has found the same thing.
Tested in people for the purpose it is sold for, and it failed. This is not missing evidence. It is evidence pointing the other way.
The strongest possible reason not to bother.
Effects reported in rats, mice or cells in a dish, with essentially nothing in people. Most compounds that work in animals fail in humans.
Look for the word rat, mouse or in vitro in any source.
Animal and laboratory work only. No human trial evidence at all.
Nobody can honestly quote you a benefit or a risk figure.
No human clinical studies exist. In several July 2026 FDA reviews, this was the regulator's own finding.
An absence of evidence is not evidence of suppression.
No human studies of this compound. Where controlled human data exists, it used a different, modified molecule, and research on that gets presented as research on this.
Check which molecule a study actually used.
A real drug candidate that entered human trials and was dropped before finishing. The work that would have established safety and a dose was never completed.
Abandonment is not proof of danger, and not proof of suppression either.
Early pharmacology may show it does something measurable, such as moving a blood marker. Whether that produces the outcomes it is sold for has not been tested.
Moving a marker is not the same as a benefit.
Proper trials, for one specific condition in one specific population. That is real evidence, and it is narrow evidence.
Check whether you resemble the people studied.
Proper randomised trials, for the specific conditions it is licensed to treat. Strong evidence, narrowly scoped.
Evidence for treating a deficiency is not evidence for topping up someone normal.
How to use this
The tiers are the point
Almost every argument about these compounds online is really an argument about which tier the evidence sits in, conducted without anyone saying so. Establish the tier first and most of the argument evaporates.