Those Viral Bodega Peptides Aren’t Actually Peptides

那些在便利店走红的“多肽”其实根本不是多肽

The Mr. Green bodega sits on a busy stretch of Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. Near the counter, you can buy the usual assortment of candy, gum, rolling papers, and soda. You can also purchase tiny vials of injectable peptides. So we did. And then we sent them to a lab.

位于纽约布鲁克林贝德福德大道繁华地段的 Mr. Green 便利店，柜台旁摆放着常见的糖果、口香糖、卷烟纸和汽水。但你在这里还能买到注射用多肽的小药瓶。于是我们买了一些，并把它们送到了实验室进行检测。

Mr. Green is one of several shops that went viral this summer for selling peptides, a broad class of amino acids touted for their ability to aid in everything from weight loss to injury recovery. For $376.20, we acquired four varieties from a vendor called INDR Labs: PT-141, for low libido; BPC-157, for healing and muscle recovery; NAD+, for cellular repair; and retatrutide, for weight loss. The clerk packed them up in an unlabeled paper bag and sent us on our way.

Mr. Green 是今年夏天因销售多肽而走红的几家商店之一。多肽是一类广泛的氨基酸，被吹捧为从减肥到损伤恢复等各种功效的“万灵药”。我们花费 376.20 美元从一家名为 INDR Labs 的供应商处购买了四个品种：用于改善性欲低下的 PT-141、用于愈合和肌肉恢复的 BPC-157、用于细胞修复的 NAD+，以及用于减肥的 retatrutide。店员将它们装进一个没有任何标签的纸袋里，我们就这样离开了。

WIRED sent the vials to Finnrick, an Austin-based startup that offers independent peptide testing. Consumers can request tests for purity and whether samples contain common contaminants, as well as whether they contain the quantity of the substance listed. The company doesn’t have in-house labs but instead acts as a middleman between labs and individuals. In a few weeks’ time, Finnrick told us, we’d know if our bodega peptides were the real deal.

《连线》（WIRED）将这些药瓶送到了位于奥斯汀的初创公司 Finnrick，该公司提供独立的多肽检测服务。消费者可以要求检测样品的纯度、是否含有常见污染物，以及是否含有标签上标注的剂量。该公司没有内部实验室，而是充当实验室与个人之间的中间人。Finnrick 告诉我们，几周后，我们就能知道在便利店买到的这些多肽是否货真价实。

In August, the results came in. The (relatively) good news: The samples contained low levels of heavy metals and endotoxins, meaning they likely weren’t actively harmful. The bad news: They weren’t peptides.

八月份，检测结果出来了。相对“好”的消息是：样品中重金属和内毒素的含量较低，这意味着它们可能不会造成直接的身体伤害。坏消息是：它们根本不是多肽。

The testing for each substance found that they did not contain the active ingredients on their labels—the BPC-157, for example, had no BPC-157 within it. The negative results suggested that the vials were either mislabeled or, if they had at one point contained the correct ingredients, had been corrupted beyond recognition. Peptides are often sensitive to temperature changes and require refrigeration, so improper storage could degrade ingredients, for example.

针对每种物质的检测发现，它们都不含标签上标注的活性成分——例如，那瓶 BPC-157 里面根本没有 BPC-157。这些阴性结果表明，这些药瓶要么是贴错了标签，要么即使它们曾经含有正确的成分，也已经变质到无法辨认的地步。多肽通常对温度变化敏感，需要冷藏，因此不当的储存方式可能会导致成分降解。

What did they contain? Hard to say, according to Marco Krause, the chief executive officer of the laboratory that performed the tests for Finnrick. “What we offer is simply a label claim analysis. So you send us what you claim to think it is, and then we run it against a standard and verify whether or not it’s the right compound,” he tells WIRED.

它们到底含有什么？为 Finnrick 进行检测的实验室首席执行官 Marco Krause 表示很难说。“我们提供的仅仅是标签声明分析。你把认为它是的东西寄给我们，我们将其与标准品进行比对，验证它是否为正确的化合物，”他告诉《连线》。

Peptides have surged in popularity in recent years, powered by endorsements from figures like US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and podcaster Joe Rogan. While some of these substances are pharmaceutical drugs like GLP-1s and insulin, many of the buzziest peptides have not been put through the typical regulatory approval process for drugs. Despite the hype surrounding them, many of these substances are not legal to sell for human consumption in the US—some precisely because they haven’t gone through the drug approval pipeline—and evidence of their purported benefits is thin.

近年来，在小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪（美国卫生与公众服务部部长）和播客主持人乔·罗根等人物的背书下，多肽的受欢迎程度激增。虽然其中一些物质是像 GLP-1 和胰岛素这样的医药产品，但许多最热门的多肽并未经过典型的药物监管审批流程。尽管炒作不断，但其中许多物质在美国作为人类消费品销售并不合法——有些正是因为它们没有经过药物审批流程——而且关于它们所谓功效的证据也非常薄弱。

The sign at Mr. Green advertising the peptides noted they were for “research use only,” a term that labs can use in an attempt to shield themselves from legal liability. But as the test results show, there’s no guarantee what’s in the vials—and in some cases there are real dangers to those taking them.

Mr. Green 宣传多肽的标牌上注明它们“仅供研究使用”，这是一个实验室试图以此规避法律责任的术语。但正如检测结果所显示的，药瓶里到底装了什么根本无法保证——在某些情况下，服用这些东西对使用者来说存在真正的危险。

According to Raphaël Mazoyer, Finnrick’s CEO, the samples WIRED tested appear to be “just duds.” Over the past three months, Mazoyer says, the company has seen an uptick in these kinds of results. Though he can’t say for certain what’s going on—in part, his company has been testing more samples as it has grown—he points to the popularity of so-called turnkey services, which help pretty much anyone open a peptide business.

Finnrick 的首席执行官 Raphaël Mazoyer 表示，《连线》测试的样品看起来“纯属次品”。Mazoyer 说，在过去三个月里，该公司发现此类检测结果有所增加。虽然他无法确定具体原因——部分原因是随着公司业务增长，检测的样本量也在增加——但他指出，所谓的“交钥匙服务”（turnkey services）非常流行，这几乎可以帮助任何人开设多肽业务。

“There are a whole bunch of labels popping up that have the same upstream vendor,” he says. Not all the peptides Finnrick tests are duds, but the nature of the industry means that businesses may use the same shoddy supplier across a number of different brands.

“现在冒出了大量品牌，但它们其实拥有同一个上游供应商，”他说。并非 Finnrick 测试的所有多肽都是次品，但该行业的性质意味着，企业可能会在多个不同品牌中使用同一个劣质供应商。

WIRED isn’t the only organization to receive abnormal lab results after sending in peptides sold over the counter. Jeff Colhoun, the founder of the research-peptide vendor directory Peptide Critic, purchased INDR Labs peptides from a smoke shop down the street from Mr. Green called Smoker’s World and sent them to a different independent laboratory for testing.

《连线》并不是唯一一家在送检柜台销售的多肽后收到异常实验室结果的机构。研究多肽供应商名录 Peptide Critic 的创始人 Jeff Colhoun 从 Mr. Green 街对面的烟草店 Smoker’s World 购买了 INDR Labs 的多肽，并将其送往另一家独立实验室进行检测。

Colhoun purchased two vials of retatrutide and two vials of NAD+ and had all four analyzed by Texas-based Analytical Formulations. The lab could “not positively identify” the substances. This doesn’t mean that they didn’t contain any of the substances listed, but it does suggest that the samples may have been contaminated or were otherwise too corrupted to decipher what was in the vials.

Colhoun 购买了两瓶 retatrutide 和两瓶 NAD+，并让位于德克萨斯州的 Analytical Formulations 对这四瓶样品进行了分析。实验室“无法明确鉴定”这些物质。这并不意味着它们不含所列的任何物质，但这确实表明样品可能受到了污染，或者已经变质到无法辨认瓶中成分的程度。

Colhoun says that he has heard from research-peptide vendors who have had similar results while testing products prior to selling them, and notes that buyers are at a high risk level when sellers “skip meaningful batch testing” altogether.

Colhoun 表示，他曾听一些研究多肽的供应商提到，他们在销售产品前进行测试时也得到了类似的结果。他指出，当卖家完全“跳过有意义的批次测试”时，买家正处于极高的风险之中。

INDR Labs did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment, but shortly after we reached out, its website began requiring login credentials. It previously cut off public access to its certificates of analysis, which provide evidence that a product has met certain standards. The company claimed its certificates were provided by Vanguard Laboratory; a spokesperson for Vanguard denied issuing the paperwork, CBS News previously reported.

INDR Labs 没有回应《连线》的置评请求，但在我们联系后不久，其网站就开始要求登录凭证。此前，该公司已经切断了公众对其分析证书的访问权限，这些证书本应作为产品符合特定标准的证明。该公司声称其证书由 Vanguard Laboratory 提供；据哥伦比亚广播公司新闻（CBS News）此前报道，Vanguard 的发言人否认签发过这些文件。

INDR Labs is just one part of this booming ecosystem that investors estimate is already worth up to $3 billion, according to reporting from Bloomberg News. While the FDA has taken recent steps to loosen regulations, and many large telehealth platforms like Hims and Mochi are preparing to start selling a broad array of peptides, many people who take these substances today are purchasing them through questionable channels.

据彭博社报道，INDR Labs 只是这个蓬勃发展的生态系统的一部分，投资者估计该市场价值已高达 30 亿美元。虽然美国食品药品监督管理局（FDA）近期采取了放宽监管的措施，且 Hims 和 Mochi 等许多大型远程医疗平台正准备开始销售各种多肽产品，但目前许多服用这些物质的人仍是通过可疑渠道购买的。

“The FDA needs to shut down these black markets,” Fred Mills, a longtime pharmacist and an executive at the nonprofit Americans for Safe and Effective Medicines, tells WIRED. Mills, who is based in Louisiana, says he’s had discussions recently about the dangers of people purchasing peptide products at convenience stores and that…

“FDA 需要取缔这些黑市，”长期担任药剂师、非营利组织“美国安全有效药物组织”（Americans for Safe and Effective Medicines）高管的 Fred Mills 告诉《连线》。常驻路易斯安那州的 Mills 表示，他最近一直在讨论人们在便利店购买多肽产品的危险性，并指出……