Tesamorelin Dosage Calculator: Units per Dose
- Calculator
- About 3 min
- Standard reconstitution arithmetic (Boyer, Math for Nurses)
- Runs in your browser, nothing is sent
- Medical review: Medical review pending
What this calculator works out
Tesamorelin ships as a dry powder, and once water is added the question is always the same: how much of this liquid is the dose my clinician wrote down? Three inputs answer it, and every number on the result follows from them.
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1
Concentration after mixing
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2
Volume and syringe units
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3
Doses per vial
How this compares with a typical online quiz
| Feature | Typical free quiz | Regenerated.com |
|---|---|---|
| Formula shown with a worked example | Rarely | Yes, concentration, volume and units step by step |
| Pre-filled dose presets | Common | None; only the dose you enter from your prescription |
| Regulatory status stated plainly | No | Yes, FDA-approved indication and what off-label means |
| Label formulations compared | No | Yes, Egrifta, Egrifta SV and Egrifta WR as information |
| Powder displacement and syringe limits explained | No | Yes, in the notes and sections |
| Answers sent to a server | Often | Never; scored in your browser, counts-only events |
Tesamorelin's regulatory status, in plain terms
Tesamorelin is a synthetic analog of growth hormone-releasing hormone. It is FDA-approved, under the brand name Egrifta, for one indication: the reduction of excess abdominal fat in HIV-infected adults with lipodystrophy. It was approved in 2010 after two trials led by Falutz and colleagues showed a reduction in visceral fat over 26 weeks, and a later trial by Stanley and colleagues found a reduction in liver fat in the same population. That is the evidence base the approval rests on.
Every other use, including tesamorelin prescribed to people without HIV for body composition, visceral fat, sleep or recovery, is off-label. Off-label prescribing is legal and common, but it is clinician-directed: the prescriber takes responsibility for the dose, the monitoring and the decision that the expected benefit justifies the risks in your case. There is no FDA-approved dose for those uses and no published trial that establishes one. A compounded tesamorelin product is a different question from off-label use of Egrifta. Tesamorelin acetate is not on the FDA's section 503A category lists updated May 14, 2026, checked on October 8, 2026, and it does not need to be: section 503A lets a pharmacy compound from a bulk substance that is a component of an FDA-approved drug product. What that allows in any one case does not follow from the lists alone, so ask the prescriber and the pharmacy on what basis the vial was compounded. This calculator takes only the dose your clinician prescribed; it has no opinion about what that dose should be, and it never suggests one.
The label formulations, as information only
Three forms of Egrifta have carried a label. The original Egrifta used 1 mg vials: the label dose was 2 mg once daily, prepared from two vials. Egrifta SV (approved 2019) is a 2 mg vial reconstituted with 0.5 mL of sterile water, and its label dose is 1.4 mg once daily, which is 0.35 mL of that solution. Egrifta WR (approved March 2025) is an 11.6 mg vial reconstituted with 1.3 mL of bacteriostatic water, giving 8 mg/mL, and its label dose is 1.28 mg once daily in 0.16 mL, with one reconstituted vial lasting seven days. The three doses differ because the formulations differ in how much of the peptide reaches the blood; the label treats them as equivalent.
These figures are here so you can read a label or check a pharmacy's instructions, not as a dose for you. Compounded tesamorelin, where a clinician prescribes it, comes in vial sizes that may not match any of these, which is exactly why the arithmetic matters: the vial on your desk and the prescription on your paperwork decide the units, not the brand's label. The label also lists contraindications that apply whatever the use: disruption of the hypothalamic-pituitary axis (pituitary tumors, pituitary surgery, head irradiation), active malignancy, pregnancy, and hypersensitivity to the drug. The main warnings are raised IGF-1, impaired glucose tolerance or diabetes, fluid retention and injection site reactions, and the label asks for glucose status to be checked before starting and IGF-1 to be monitored during treatment.
Why the water volume changes the units but not the dose
Adding more water dilutes the vial; the total micrograms in it stay the same. That is useful when the draw is too small to measure. A 2 mg vial with 0.5 mL of water holds 4,000 mcg/mL, so a 1,000 mcg dose is 0.25 mL, or 25 units: easy to read. A 250 mcg dose from the same vial would be 0.0625 mL, or just over 6 units, where a half-unit error is 8 percent of the dose. Reconstituting the same vial with 2 mL instead gives 1,000 mcg/mL, so the 250 mcg dose becomes 0.25 mL, or 25 units, and the same error becomes 2 percent. The dose did not change; the measurement got easier.
Two things to keep straight. The water you add is whatever your pharmacy or clinician told you to use for that vial, and a change should be agreed with them, not improvised, because it changes every draw from that vial. And the calculator assumes the final volume equals the water you added, which ignores the volume of the powder itself. For small vials that is a difference of a percent or two. For large ones it is visible: the Egrifta WR label adds 1.3 mL to 11.6 mg and quotes 8 mg/mL, not the 8.9 mg/mL this arithmetic would give, because the powder adds about 0.15 mL. When a label or pharmacy gives you the concentration directly, use theirs.
Reading a U-100 insulin syringe
A U-100 syringe is marked in units for insulin, and one unit is 0.01 mL regardless of what is in the syringe: 100 units is 1 mL, 50 units is 0.5 mL, 10 units is 0.1 mL. A 0.3 mL syringe is marked to 30 units, often in half units, and is the easiest to read for small draws; a 0.5 mL syringe runs to 50 units; a 1 mL syringe to 100. Choose the smallest syringe that holds the draw, because the markings are further apart and the half-unit error is smaller. Draw to the top of the plunger's black tip, expel air bubbles before you read, and if the number on the result is below about 5 units or carries a fraction of a unit you cannot read, take that back to your clinician or pharmacist before you inject anything.
Methodology and sources
The calculator implements the standard dimensional analysis for reconstituting a lyophilized vial, as taught in nursing dosage calculation texts such as Boyer's Math for Nurses and reflected in USP General Chapter 797 practice on diluent volumes. Concentration in micrograms per milliliter equals the milligrams on the vial times 1,000, divided by the milliliters of diluent added. The volume per dose equals the prescribed micrograms divided by that concentration. Units on a U-100 syringe equal milliliters times 100, and doses per vial equal the vial's micrograms divided by the dose, rounded down. The formula's limits: it assumes the final volume equals the diluent added (powder displacement is ignored), it assumes a U-100 syringe, and it has no knowledge of what dose is appropriate; it reports whatever micrograms you enter.
How this is calculated: a 5 mg vial reconstituted with 2 mL of bacteriostatic water holds 5,000 mcg divided by 2 mL, which is 2,500 mcg/mL. A prescribed dose of 250 mcg is 250 divided by 2,500, which is 0.1 mL, and 0.1 mL times 100 is 10 units on a U-100 syringe; the vial holds 5,000 divided by 250, which is 20 such doses. The same arithmetic reproduces the Egrifta SV label: a 2 mg vial with 0.5 mL gives 4,000 mcg/mL, and the label's 1.4 mg dose (1,400 mcg) is 1,400 divided by 4,000, which is 0.35 mL, the volume the label states, or 35 units.
There are no bands in the usual sense, because a syringe draw is not a result to interpret. The bands on this page read the units figure for one purpose only: whether the draw is large enough to measure accurately on an insulin syringe, and what to do when it is not. Dose information on this page (the Egrifta label doses) is quoted from the FDA-approved prescribing information for its indication and is not a dose for any other use; the only dose this calculator uses is the one your clinician prescribed.
Medical review: Medical review pending. Last updated .
References
- Boyer MJ. Math for Nurses: A Pocket Guide to Dosage Calculation and Drug Preparation. 9th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer; 2016.
- Theratechnologies Inc. EGRIFTA WR (tesamorelin) for injection: prescribing information. Revised 2025. DailyMed, US National Library of Medicine. https://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/fda/fdaDrugXsl.cfm?setid=839334d3-8c1d-4c26-9036-2ab524a6ea75
- Theratechnologies Inc. EGRIFTA SV (tesamorelin) for injection: prescribing information. Revised 2019. US Food and Drug Administration. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/drugsatfda_docs/label/2019/022505s012s013lbl.pdf
- Falutz J, Allas S, Blot K, et al. Metabolic effects of a growth hormone-releasing factor in patients with HIV. N Engl J Med. 2007;357(23):2359-2370. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa072375
- Stanley TL, Feldpausch MN, Oh J, et al. Effect of tesamorelin on visceral fat and liver fat in HIV-infected patients with abdominal fat accumulation: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA. 2014;312(4):380-389. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.8334