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The nootropics spaces online (notably /r/nootropics, among others) contain references to compounds like semax or noopept which seem to have unclear support from the literature, or in the case of semax have hundreds of studies from russian labs, and only a single one from a western lab (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschemneuro.1c00707).
After having little success with the headache meds my doctors have been prescribing me, I was thinking of trying some of these compounds. I was curious what your guys' thoughts are on these compounds. Is there a good reason they haven't been studied much in the west yet, or is it just inertia?
Open to any thoughts.
Thanks.
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Notes -
I have read over 1000 Russian/USSR studies in pharmacology.
The Russian medical research is not the only one to be an isolated island, this apply also to Japanese research for example, see e.g their research on tinnitus.
While it is true that Russian research in pharmacology is understudied by the west, because of criminal mediocrity, there are many counter examples of Russian counpounds that have a decent amount of international research.
See e.g the biggest discovery in medecine of the century: skq1.
IIRC for Russian pharmaceuticals, the international researchers I "often see" study them are Indian or Brazilian. Maybe German too.
As for Nootropics or geroprotectors, they are generally markedly more ignored by the international "community" because of systemic failures, since nootropics/cognition enhancement are not considered a legitimate drug target and therefore is underfunded. Except for the niche research on mitigating fragile X syndrome, autism, the negative symptoms of schizophrenia, social anxiety, etc.
Since USSR and to some extent Russian research is public funded they are almost the only one in the world to afford fundamental research at scale of targets that have no commercial value in the prescription drug market.
As for geroprotectors the same apply, Ageing is generally not considered a disease, nor something that should be treated by taking pharmacology because we live in a very infantile/stockholmised world.
Even though geroprotectors often have partial efficacy against a wide range of lucrative diseases, the extreme inertia and cost of clinical trials combined to the extreme aversion of doctors for polypharmacology, partial drugs and simply keeping up with medical advance when it is evolitive instead of being disruptive explain that they are underresearched by the west and never prescribed.
The Russian also afford something revolutionary, they study the pharmacological application of drug that are plant/animal derived or that are endogenously produced in the human body (e.g. Peptides).
Those entire class of pharmacologicals, which have a billion of year of existence and bidirectional fine tuning, and ideal side effects profile are in general not patentable and since mostly only corporations fund clinical trials, the main class of medecine is in practice, non-existent because of broken incentives.
Because the Russian bypass those attractors/repulsors that plague the medical research, they can and do make revolutionary discoveries in most fields of medicine.
As i said, many Russian counpounds do have multiple international research that reproduce and corroborate the potency of their results.
However it is true that there is a concern of fraud/amplifying the potency of the effect of a pharmaceutical.
In my experience such fraud is rare but is possible.
The main candidate I have is the atypical anxiolytic Tofisopam.
Not Russian though, but from an ex USSR European state.
I have read the 300s studies about it.
There is IIRC a lot of corroborating studies from around the world, Including recent studies.
Tofisopam is an atypical anxiolytic, antidepressant, non addictive gabaergic, dopaminergic and generally excitatory drug as is is an atypical selective PDE inhibitor.
It is the only drug in the world to have this pharmacological profile and can be expected to have widespread, unique effects.
The body of studies for its action mechanisms are many and are very convincing in principle.
I am not rejecting the research on the nature of its effects.
Tofisopam is extremely interesting and that is not a fraud per se.
However I am rejecting the extreme amount of studies showing very potent effects on depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and other psychological conditions.
While the effect is real and tofisopam might be used for those conditions, how can there be so many studies corroborating very potent results while the actual reported effect online is very mild/inconsistent is a mystery for me.
Even though the online reports are rare and it might be that tofisopam truly is a wonder drug, IMHO I doubt it.
How can it be fraud when there is so much research from different teams and decade, even international one ?
Just look at how potent tofisopam is supposed to be https://fr.scribd.com/presentation/328205226/Tofisopam-Medical-2014-REVISED
A fraud at this scale can't be explained.
It would be too risky to synchronize such a massive amount of fraudulent researchers. Among the 300s studies not a single one significantly dismiss the rest of the research.
But if the reported potency of tofisopam is really a fraud then that is horrific for the rest of the medical research, nothing could be trusted as even a compound with so many studies, over decades and many international teams, for so many conditions would not be immune to consistent, systematic international fraud.
n = 1, but tofisopam did nothing for me.
I have studied all anxyolitics, there are many effective alternative with no/low tolerance.
Based on the scientific evidence, I would strongly recommend opipramol or Etifoxine + TUDCA (beware CYP interactions, can be lethal)
Note: I haven't tried many anxiolytics myself but I have used glycine for sleep and I must say it makes me feel calm and nice/soft.
So about tofisopam, I have tried it on myself for 2 weeks (a bit too short, the studies show peak results at 3-4 weeks iirc)
Firstly I am not depressed. I can have mild social anxiety with some people. I can be a bit hypoactive or have slightly chronic fatigue or high sensitivity to sleep deprivation.
I am not anhedonic but I am less hedonic than I wish to be.
I have ADHD PI untreated.
I don't know what I hoped out of tofisopam, I'm not the main audience, especially for depression.
For the social anxiety it might have helped me but not enough experience with it at parties. If it helped it was inconsistent or ambiguous because I sometimes mixed it with bromantane (another dopaminergic and anxyolitic).
So what did it do?
I didn't felt it the other days, probably homeostasis doing its work
Like I knew I was on something.
Subtle but a bit dirty.
Less dirty than high dose bromantane though.
At low-mid dose I didn't felt it.
That's notable since few drugs can be felt.
It might have helped me with ADHD in theory (dopa) but I did not feel an improvement. Nothing like e.g. 2fma
It might have had a Nootropic effect, lots of promising research on PDEs about this however I did not feel smarter however I consider myself a very high performer and did not design a benchmark.
It might have helped me with SAD (the most likely) but not enough data yet, I'll try again one day eventually. Especially as a potential augmentation to stimulants.
Yeah my personal report is quite useless but I hope it allows to bring some nuance that tofisopam does not do nothing per se, as in it is not homeopathy.
One theory I have to explain the reported discrepancy online would be that most of the lab rat(ionalist)s do not actually suffer from clinical GAD or depression.
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