A guide to care choices
Get the product’s complete name and ask about its form: a pill, an injection or another kind. Then ask why it is being offered. A ready-made medicine, a medicine made for a patient and a product labelled for research need different checks.
The US Food and Drug Administration is called FDA throughout this guide.
An FDA-approved medicine comes with official prescribing information that lists its approved uses; ask whether memory is one of those uses.
Ask the clinician to show you the approved uses in that document and explain the research about memory. Approval for a different use does not answer your memory question.
A doctor or pharmacist makes or changes a compounded medicine for one patient instead of dispensing a ready-made medicine.
Medicines made or changed for a patient lacked FDA approval on September 26, 2026; their safety, how well they were made and whether they worked had not been checked by the agency before sale.
FDA letters, as of September 26, 2026, said that labelling a product for research did not excuse sales of unapproved drugs for use in people.
Ask for a care route with a clinician and a named pharmacy. A research label does not answer a treatment question.
The names Semax, Selank and Dihexa identify ingredients, rather than telling you what a medicine does. The word “acetate” in a full ingredient name identifies a chemical version of that ingredient; keep it in the name when asking about a product.
As checked on September 26, 2026, FDA’s page dated April 22, 2026 named Semax, Selank acetate and Dihexa acetate as ingredients for which requests to allow use in compounding had been taken back.
The groups that asked FDA to allow those ingredients had taken back their requests; FDA still listed safety concerns about the ingredients.
Taking back a request did not give a pharmacy permission to make medicine with that ingredient.
As checked on September 26, 2026, FDA’s concerns about peptide ingredients included unwanted reactions to injections, unwanted substances mixed in and too little safety information from people.
These records do not show that any of these ingredients improves memory. Ask the clinician what research supports the exact product for your concern and whether it can legally be supplied.
Federal rules, as of September 26, 2026, did not treat listing a medicine or its maker with FDA as approval of that medicine or permission to sell it.
Ask whether “registered” only means the medicine or its maker appears on an FDA list. Ask to see the approval for the exact medicine and use being proposed.
Explains how medicine made or changed for a patient differs from a ready-made medicine with FDA approval.
Taking back a request to use an ingredient did not give permission to make medicine with it. The page still lists FDA’s safety concerns.
Explains why appearing on an FDA list or displaying a badge is different from having approval for a medicine.