Home Sources
Source Ledger
Every primary source this site rests on, with a live link, what it supports, and the date we read it. Plus the claims we deliberately do not source, and why.
Short answer
This page lists every primary source behind the clinical, regulatory and safety statements on this site: 15 regulator documents, labeling records and trial reports, each with a working link and a plain description of which claims rest on it. Every trial in our library also links to its own ClinicalTrials.gov record and DOI.
The second table is the one most publishers omit: the claims we cannot source, stated openly rather than dressed up with a citation that does not actually support them.
Primary sources
Read on 2026-08-05. Links open on the publisher's own site — we do not mirror or paraphrase a source in place of linking it. If one of these has rotted, tell us and it goes in the corrections log rather than being quietly replaced.
| Source | Type | What it supports here | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| ZEPBOUND (tirzepatide) injection — full prescribing information DailyMed, US National Library of Medicine | Regulatory labeling | The dose ladder (2.5 mg initiation for four weeks, 2.5 mg increments at intervals of at least four weeks, 15 mg maximum), the statement that 2.5 mg is not approved as a maintenance dosage, injection sites and rotation, storage, contraindications (MTC and MEN 2, serious hypersensitivity), the boxed warning on rodent thyroid C-cell tumours, and the warnings on severe gastrointestinal reactions, acute kidney injury from volume depletion, gallbladder disease and pancreatitis. | 2026-08-05 |
| ZEPBOUND highlights of prescribing information (2026 revision, PDF) US Food and Drug Administration, Drugs@FDA | Regulatory labeling | The current approved label including the dosing schedule applying to all approved indications, and the note that routine calcitonin monitoring or thyroid ultrasound is of uncertain value for early MTC detection. | 2026-08-05 |
| FD&C Act provisions that apply to human drug compounding US Food and Drug Administration | Regulatory framework | The distinction between section 503A compounding by a licensed pharmacist in a state-licensed pharmacy and section 503B compounding within an FDA-registered outsourcing facility, and the different requirements attaching to each. | 2026-08-05 |
| Pharmacy compounding of human drug products under section 503A — final guidance US Food and Drug Administration | Regulatory guidance | The conditions under which a compounded drug is exempt from new drug approval, current good manufacturing practice and adequate-directions-for-use requirements — that is, why a compounded preparation is lawful without being FDA-approved. | 2026-08-05 |
| Registration for human drug compounding outsourcing facilities under section 503B US Food and Drug Administration | Regulatory guidance | What registration as an outsourcing facility involves, used on our 503A versus 503B page. | 2026-08-05 |
| FDA's concerns with unapproved GLP-1 drugs used for weight loss US Food and Drug Administration | Safety communication | That compounded drugs should only be used where an FDA-approved drug cannot meet the patient's need and should be filled at a state-licensed pharmacy; FDA's import alert on GLP-1 active pharmaceutical ingredient from certain manufacturers; enforcement touching telehealth marketing of retatrutide and API distributors selling it; the existence of fraudulent compounded semaglutide and tirzepatide carrying false product information; and complaints that compounded GLP-1 shipments arrived warm or with inadequate ice packs. | 2026-08-05 |
| FDA warns 30 telehealth companies against illegal marketing of compounded GLP-1s US Food and Drug Administration (press announcement) | Enforcement | That 30 warning letters were issued to telehealth companies for false or misleading claims; that the primary violations were claims implying sameness with FDA-approved products and obscuring product sourcing by branding a compounded product with the telehealth firm's own name; and FDA's statement that compounded drugs are not FDA-approved, are not reviewed for safety, effectiveness or quality before marketing, and are not the same as generic drugs. | 2026-08-05 |
| FDA intends to take action against non-FDA-approved GLP-1 drugs US Food and Drug Administration (commissioner's statement) | Enforcement | FDA's stated intent to restrict GLP-1 active pharmaceutical ingredients used in non-approved compounded drugs that are mass-marketed as alternatives to approved products, and its position that promotional materials may not claim compounded products are generic versions of, the same as, or clinically proven equivalent to FDA-approved drugs. | 2026-08-05 |
| FDA clarifies policies for compounders as national GLP-1 supply begins to stabilize US Food and Drug Administration | Supply status | That FDA determined the tirzepatide injection shortage resolved on 2 October 2024, and the reminder of legal restrictions on compounding copies of FDA-approved drugs — the regulatory hinge behind the restructuring of the compounded market. | 2026-08-05 |
| Tirzepatide once weekly for the treatment of obesity (SURMOUNT-1) New England Journal of Medicine 2022;387:205-216 | Randomized controlled trial | The headline weight-reduction figures at 72 weeks across the 5, 10 and 15 mg arms against placebo, and the adverse-event frequencies quoted throughout the side-effect cluster. | 2026-08-05 |
| SURMOUNT-1 — PubMed record (PMID 35658024) PubMed, US National Library of Medicine | Bibliographic record | Abstract and citation metadata for SURMOUNT-1, for readers without journal access. | 2026-08-05 |
| Tirzepatide after intensive lifestyle intervention (SURMOUNT-3) Nature Medicine 2023 | Randomized controlled trial | Weight reduction achieved after a lifestyle-intervention lead-in, used where we distinguish drug effect from lifestyle effect. | 2026-08-05 |
| ClinicalTrials.gov study records US National Library of Medicine | Trial registry | Registration, design, population, arms and endpoint for every trial in our library. Each trial page links directly to its own registry record by NCT number. | 2026-08-05 |
| Boards of pharmacy directory National Association of Boards of Pharmacy | Regulator directory | How to reach the licensee lookup for each state regulator named on our state pages. | 2026-08-05 |
| BeSafeRx — safely buying prescription medicines online US Food and Drug Administration | Consumer guidance | The consumer-facing checks behind our provider red-flag and verification pages. | 2026-08-05 |
Trial registry and DOI index
Every trial we summarize, with its registration record and digital object identifier. Our summary is a summary; the registry record and the published report are the evidence.
What we do not source, and why
A citation that does not support the claim attached to it is worse than no citation. These are the claims on this site that rest on observation, commercial disclosure or judgment rather than on a citable authority, and we would rather say so than manufacture a reference.
| Claim | Why there is no citation |
|---|---|
| Program prices | Prices are recorded from each program's own published material or, where flagged, from a named third-party review. They are commercial facts with no authoritative registry, they change without notice, and they carry a verification date rather than a citation. Where two sources disagree we publish both. |
| Service quality and shipping reliability | We hold no measurement of these we would defend, so we do not score them and do not cite anything for them. |
| Local clinic pricing | The $400–$600 range quoted on metro pages is a market observation, not a surveyed figure. It is labeled as such rather than presented as data. |
| Real-world versus trial results | The claim that real-world weight reduction runs below trial averages is well established across the class, but the precise gap varies by cohort and we do not attach a single number to it. |
Machine-readable
The ledger is published as sources.json and sources.csv alongside the pricing and trial datasets, so an answer engine or a journalist can check what we cite without scraping this page.
Primary sources
Clinical, dosing and regulatory statements on this page rest on the documents below. Links go to the publisher, not to a summary of it. Prices are not sourced here — they carry a verification date instead, and the reason is set out in the source ledger.
- ZEPBOUND (tirzepatide) full prescribing information — DailyMed, US National Library of Medicine. Dose ladder, contraindications, warnings, storage.
- FDA’s concerns with unapproved GLP-1 drugs used for weight loss — US Food and Drug Administration. Compounded GLP-1 risks, API import alert, cold-chain complaints.
- FD&C Act provisions that apply to human drug compounding — US Food and Drug Administration. Why a compounded preparation is lawful without being FDA-approved.
- Tirzepatide once weekly for the treatment of obesity (SURMOUNT-1) — N Engl J Med 2022;387:205-216. Registration NCT04184622. The weight-reduction and adverse-event figures used across this site.
- The full source ledger — every primary source, what it supports, the date we read it, and the claims we deliberately do not source.