Somatropin Recombinant: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Somatropin Recombinant is a medicine sold in the U.S. under one brand. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Injectable
- Sold as
- Zorbtive
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
- Half-life
- about 3 hours (after subcutaneous injection)
Every somatropin recombinant product we track (1)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
Only one: Zorbtive.
What people report to the FDA about somatropin recombinant
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 3 reports naming somatropin recombinant, and the FDA flagged 100% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- anaphylactic reaction1 reports
- dizziness1 reports
- hepatic function abnormal1 reports
- ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome1 reports
- photophobia1 reports
- tinnitus1 reports
- vertigo1 reports
- vision blurred1 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean somatropin recombinant caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 26, 2026.
How long somatropin recombinant stays in your system
The elimination half-life of somatropin recombinant is about 3 hours (after subcutaneous injection). Somatropin is recombinant human growth hormone, given by subcutaneous injection. Its true elimination half-life is very short — the label reports a mean terminal half-life of only 0.4 hours (about 24 minutes) after intravenous dosing. After the usual subcutaneous injection the apparent half-life is longer, about 3.0 hours in growth-hormone-deficient adults, because slow absorption from the injection site (not elimination) becomes rate-limiting. So the drug itself clears quickly, but a subcutaneous dose is released over several hours. This half-life is not a drug-test detection window: growth hormone use is detected by anti-doping tests through downstream biomarkers (e.g., IGF-1) and isoform ratios that stay altered for days, far longer than the hormone's own half-life. Genotropin was not studied in patients with renal or hepatic impairment.
GENOTROPIN (somatropin) FDA label — DailyMed ↗Half-life is how long the body takes to clear half a dose. It is not the same as how long a drug test can detect it, and it varies with age, kidney and liver function.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
How long does somatropin recombinant stay in your system?
The elimination half-life of somatropin recombinant is about 3 hours (after subcutaneous injection) — that is how long the body takes to clear half of a dose. Somatropin is recombinant human growth hormone, given by subcutaneous injection. Its true elimination half-life is very short — the label reports a mean terminal half-life of only 0.4 hours (about 24 minutes) after intravenous dosing. After the usual subcutaneous injection the apparent half-life is longer, about 3.0 hours in growth-hormone-deficient adults, because slow absorption from the injection site (not elimination) becomes rate-limiting. So the drug itself clears quickly, but a subcutaneous dose is released over several hours. This half-life is not a drug-test detection window: growth hormone use is detected by anti-doping tests through downstream biomarkers (e.g., IGF-1) and isoform ratios that stay altered for days, far longer than the hormone's own half-life. Genotropin was not studied in patients with renal or hepatic impairment. Half-life is not the same as how long a drug test can detect the drug, and it varies with age, kidney and liver function.
Can you take somatropin recombinant with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run somatropin recombinant against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What forms does somatropin recombinant come in?
Across the brands we track, somatropin recombinant is currently marketed as injectable, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic somatropin recombinant?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled somatropin recombinant product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Somatropin Recombinant: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/somatropin-recombinant
- MLA
- “Somatropin Recombinant: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/somatropin-recombinant.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for somatropin recombinant on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.