‘He told me that they were safe’: Australians warned to think twice before buying unregulated peptides as online market booms

Australians are being warned to think twice before buying unregulated peptides online, with experts cautioning the products can be dangerous and, in some cases, deadly.

The warning comes as the Therapeutic Goods Administration steps up action against the booming online trade, putting those who illegally advertise, import or supply unapproved peptide products on notice.

For Isabella Boutin, the message is deeply personal. Her brother Alex died at 33 after suffering a heart attack following years of using body enhancement drugs, including peptides.

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“There’s no real words to describe the loss that we’ve had in our family,” Boutin said.

“I’ve seen my parents absolutely devastated by losing their son and me as a sibling, it’s almost like you’ve been amputated.”

“It’s really something that is just really hard to explain there’s just no words for such a pain.”

She said she only discovered Alex was using peptides a few years before he died.

“He told me that they were safe and that it had been a friend that had told him about it and that it was going to be really good for him and I had no idea that they were going to be dangerous at all,” she told 7NEWS.

A recent 7NEWS Spotlight investigation revealed just how easily unregulated peptides can be purchased through social media, with some products arriving at buyers’ homes within hours.

The University of Queensland researcher Dr Timothy Piatkowski said young Australians are being heavily targeted online.

“If you go onto Instagram or TikTok, there are targeted ads presented very, very readily,” Piatkowski said.

“Click those ads and move into a WhatsApp chat where you can very, very quickly and easily purchase these products and have them shipped to your house within 48 hours or less sometimes.”

His research also found major concerns about what is actually inside the products being sold.

“The testing that we’ve done via my research program at the University of Queensland showed that not only were the products underdosed but they were also overdosed,” he said.

“Some of them had nothing in them. Some of them had 190 per cent of the actual dose.”

“What this means for the end consumer is that you really don’t know what you’re getting.”

Peptides are short chains of amino acids that help the body grow and repair. While some are approved medicines prescribed by doctors for legitimate medical conditions, unapproved products are increasingly being promoted online as a shortcut to build muscle, lose fat and recover faster.

Despite the TGA’s crackdown, Piatkowski believes enforcement alone will not solve the problem.

“This definitely isn’t a problem that we can regulate our way out of,” Piatkowski said.

“We need to ensure that people who are using these products and they are using them, we know that there’s people out in community doing so, have safer injecting guidance.”

“And that they’re given other information that’s evidence based around what’s really in these products.”

Boutin hopes sharing Alex’s story will stop others from making the same mistake.

“I don’t want anyone else to go through this pain,” Boutin said.

“There are a lot of young men dying from PEDS use and unfortunately no one’s really talking about it.”