Health Canada warned against buying peptides online. CBC News easily bought some

Experts say the unauthorised products come into regulatory gray district, with modified evidence of safety and risks that include hormonal imbalances, the growth of cancerous tumours, and liver or kidney damage.

Health Canada noted that a causal link had not been established between the products and the reported adverse effects. The department does regulate some peptides as drugs. 

The medications approved by Health Canada are often prescribed by a doctor, such as glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists, or GLP-1s, a class that includes Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro injections used to treat obesity and diabetes. 

Dr. Daniel Drucker's research at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute at Sinai Health in Toronto helped pave the way for GLP-1 medications. Drucker cautions that many of the peptides promoted online do not have a large body of medical evidence showing their safety and effectiveness the way GLP-1s do.

How do semaglutides or GLP1's work?

Drucker warns that the purity of many peptides sold online is not clear and how the body reacts is hard to predict.

"You might be allergic to it," Drucker said. "It might be a substance that your body has never seen before, so you mount an immune response and it can have unintended side effects on many parts of your body that can be potentially even fatal. This is not something we would encourage at all."

In contrast to the many steps the pharmaceutical industry takes to ensure medications are safe and effective, Drucker said a mail-order peptide supplier does "almost nothing."

Health Canada said it has seized several unauthorized injectable peptides, adding that many other unauthorized products exist and should be avoided.

Kinesiology professor Stuart Phillips at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., said unauthorized peptides fall into a regulatory grey zone. Many products are not compounds tested in human clinical trials with an eight-digit Health Canada Drug Identification Number or controlled substances like anabolic steroids.

"People are getting powder in a vial … mixing it up and injecting themselves," Phillips said. "Like if that doesn't scream high-risk behaviour to you, I'm not sure what does." 

If peptides were effective, pharmaceutical companies would patent and sell the medications, Phillips said. He suspects pharmaceutical companies likely examined popular injectable peptides but opted not to pursue them because of weak results or safety concerns.

Phillips said Health Canada may need to go beyond warnings and tighten regulation of peptides to better protect Canadians. 

Journalist

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