Bemethyl (bemitil)

Bemethyl, known in the Russian literature as bemitil and sold in the region under names including Metaprot, Bemactor and Antihot, is 2-ethylthiobenzimidazole, normally handled as the hydrobromide salt. It came out of work led by Vladimir Vinogradov at the Department of Pharmacology of the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad during the 1970s, which set out to define a class of drugs the authors called actoprotectors: agents that raise tolerance of physical work without raising oxygen consumption or heat production. Bemethyl was the first and remains the reference member of that class. It was given to Soviet cosmonauts, used in preparing athletes for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games and issued widely in the Soviet armed forces, and after 1991 its official manufacture stopped in Russia before production resumed in Ukraine (PMID: 24009833). It was later re-registered in Russia as the capsule medicine Metaprot (marketing authorization holder AnviLab, manufacturer Farmproekt, product instruction approved 2014), indicated for restoring working capacity and for asthenia after infection, surgery or head injury (Russian State Register of Medicines, Metaprot).

The proposed mechanism is metabolic rather than receptor based. Reviews describe increased synthesis of RNA and protein, particularly gluconeogenesis enzymes in liver and kidney and mitochondrial enzymes, which supports reuse of lactate and maintenance of ATP production under load, along with an indirect antioxidant effect through induction of antioxidant enzymes rather than direct radical scavenging. The authors of that review state plainly that the specific mechanism behind the protein expression effect remains unknown (PMID: 24009833).

Animal work is extensive and almost all Russian. In rats, bemethyl distributed into liver, brain, kidney, spleen, heart, skeletal muscle, lung, adipose tissue and testes after single and repeated oral administration, accumulating most in liver (PMID: 17181062). It produced a cerebroprotective effect and normalized brain energy metabolism in rats after craniocerebral trauma (PMID: 15514724), a hepatoprotective effect with reduced fibrosis in rats with experimental cirrhosis (PMID: 16845942), and it strengthened the antioxidant adaptation produced by intermittent hypoxic training in rats (PMID: 16282998). Rat metabolism was mapped in 2021, with nine metabolites identified in 24 h urine after a single oral dose of 330 mg/kg and a benzimidazole-acetylcysteine conjugate as the most abundant (PMID: 34445727).

Human data are thin by modern standards. A pharmacokinetic study in healthy volunteers given a single 250 mg oral dose reported a mean peak serum concentration of 0.91 microg/mL at about 1.06 h (PMID: 21870773). Clinical reports cover small groups: 15 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (PMID: 10572751), seven children with epilepsy (PMID: 9324390) and patients with asthenic syndromes after moderate brain injury (PMID: 16404942). No large randomized placebo-controlled trial appears in the indexed English-language literature.

Regulatory reality matters here. Bemethyl has no FDA or EMA authorization. In Ukraine it has been certified as a dietary supplement rather than a medicine, while in Russia it is registered as the medicine Metaprot (PMID: 24009833, PMID: 21870773). The World Anti-Doping Agency placed 2-ethylsulfanyl-1H-benzimidazole on its Monitoring Program from 2018 to 2021 and removed it for 2022, so it is on neither the current Prohibited List nor the Monitoring Program; an excretion study in six volunteers showed the parent drug and its glucuronide stay detectable in urine for weeks (PMID: 30346653). What is sold online as a bemethyl solution is a research chemical rather than the capsule product used in the published studies, and nothing verifies its identity or content.

Bemethyl (bemitil) is available in liquid form.

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1 of the vendors BodyHackGuide tracks list Bemethyl (bemitil) (1 listing). Among BodyHackGuide's Bemethyl (bemitil) listings recorded as in stock with a milligram count, the lowest price per milligram is $0.025/mg at Disguised Alpha and the median is $0.025/mg. The Bemethyl (bemitil) prices on BodyHackGuide are vendors' listed prices as BodyHackGuide last recorded them, not transactions; the most recent recorded change to a Bemethyl (bemitil) listing is dated 7 September 2026.

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