Chonluten respiratory regulators. Ovagen liver capsules. L Cartitine ampoules. Gotratix A-18 supplements.
These might sound like back-alley drugs from the latest Star Wars spin-off, but they all have one thing in common: you can buy ’em right now on eBay.
Take a quick search for “peptides” on eBay and you’ll be knees-deep in a veritable flood of sketchy substances marketed as amino acid products. There are legitimate medical uses for peptides — GLP-1 drugs, for instance — but the stuff getting hawked on eBay requires no prescription and seems to have no regulatory oversight whatsoever. Some appear to be pills, but the rabbit hole quickly gives way to a battery of injectable substances clearly trying to snare customers drawn in from the growing DIY peptide craze.
Like its e-commerce peer Temu, eBay is awash in “peptide” products with murky provenance. For $55 dollars, for example, customers can purchase a box of “A-15 Zhenoluten Ovary peptide bioregulator” pills, purported to be from the St. Petersburg Institute of Bioregulation and Gerontology.
According to the packaging, Zhenoluten is derived from pig and cow intestines. Though Zhenoluten is distributed by a firm called “Vita Stream Inc,” based in Kirkland, Washington, the substance itself is manufactured by a firm headquartered on Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt, a street in the Petrogradsky District of Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Majority owned by Russian footballer Roman Eremenko, according to the Better Business Bureau, Vita Stream offers a number of similar ingestibles available on eBay, including Gotratix, supposedly derived from the A-18 muscle peptide complex, Glandokort, from the A-17 adrenal peptide complex, and Suprefort, from the A-1 pancreas peptide complex.
None of these, of course, have been tested by the US Food and Drug Administration. Even still, Eremenko’s suite of bizarre peptide pills pales in comparison to some of the other substances on offer from the e-commerce giant.
The more you look, the more dubious it sounds. For $37, one can order a 400mg ampoule of the transparent substance L Carnitine, for example, an amino acid derivative which gets synthesized in the liver. A sickly neon-orange “CoQ10 Natural Supplement” is said to contain “pure CoQ10,” a lipid antioxidant, along with MCT oil and “0.9 percent benzyl alcohol.”
Beyond purpose-built storefronts, eBay offers a host of other products for building your own gray-market peptide stack. One can easily find used peptide ampoules for sale, straight from Norwalk, California, the “related items” for which contain dozens of listings for peptide starter kits, reusable “peptide pens,” and of course, medical syringes.
eBay didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The company’s policies technically prohibit both the sale of illegal drugs and prescription medications, but which category these murky injectables fall into apparently isn’t eBay’s concern. For a commerce platform of its size, quietly allowing unknown injectables to change hands — while taking a cut of the profits no less — feels like a serious and risky abdication of responsibility. Buyer beware.
More on peptides: GLP-1s Are an Environmental Catastrophe