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Document set current to 30 July 2026
Evidence synthesis · Safety review

SS-31 (elamipretide) in primary mitochondrial myopathy and bioenergetic disorders: tolerability and discontinuation

In the population defined for primary mitochondrial myopathy and bioenergetic disorders, what is the incidence of adverse events leading to discontinuation with SS-31 (elamipretide) compared with its comparator?

Document identifier
CEI-ES-115
Series
Evidence synthesis
Version
3.1
Published
14 Nov 2024
Last reviewed
14 May 2025
Next review
14 Nov 2026
Identifier
10.71829/cei.syn.115
Certainty
Moderate
Cycle
2024 Q4
Review type
Safety review
Search executed
23 Sep 2024

Templated review frame. This review question was generated by crossing an indication with a compound for which contributing trials exist. Its prose frame is templated and is shared with other questions of the same shape. Its included studies, its summary of findings and its certainty rating are computed from the underlying records and are not templated. The Institute publishes these questions because the alternative is to leave a question the document set can answer unanswered, and it labels them because the alternative is to present a templated frame as an authored one.

§1Abstract

§1.1Review question

In the population defined for primary mitochondrial myopathy and bioenergetic disorders, what is the incidence of adverse events leading to discontinuation with SS-31 (elamipretide) compared with its comparator?

§1.2PICO frame

Table 1. The registered PICO frame. Any change made after protocol registration is recorded in the amendment log at §5 and is identified there as post hoc.

ElementAs registered
PopulationGenetically determined impairment of oxidative phosphorylation producing myopathy, exercise intolerance or multisystem disease.
InterventionSS-31 (elamipretide) administered as subcutaneous or intravenous in clinical studies.
ComparatorThe comparator used in each contributing trial, reported per trial rather than pooled across comparator types.
OutcomesAnchor outcome for this indication: Six-minute walk distance. Additional outcomes: Primary mitochondrial myopathy symptom assessment; Muscle phosphocreatine recovery kinetics.

§1.3Method in brief

A review of harms, in which the absence of an event in a trial of conventional size is treated as uninformative rather than as reassurance. The protocol was registered with the Institute's secretariat before the search was executed. The search was run on 23 September 2024 across 8 sources and is reproduced in full at §2. Screening, extraction and certainty assessment were performed independently by two members of the secretariat with disagreement resolved by a third.[1,2]

§1.4Conclusion

Moderate certainty evidence from 2 contributing trials bears on tolerability. Discontinuation for adverse events is reported in the summary-of-findings table alongside the efficacy outcomes rather than in an annex, because a trial reporting a given effect with high discontinuation is reporting a materially different result from one reporting the same effect with high persistence.

The conclusion rests on 2 contributing studies, listed with their extracted data at §3 and summarised outcome by outcome at §4.

§1.5Limitations

References cited on this page

References are numbered in order of first citation in this document. Each superscript in the text links to its entry below.

  1. Szeto HH. First-in-class cardiolipin-protective compound as a therapeutic agent to restore mitochondrial bioenergetics. British Journal of Pharmacology 2014;171(8):2029–2050. doi:10.1111/bph.12461 · PMID 24117165
  2. D’Hondt M, Bracke N, Taevernier L, Gevaert B, Verbeke F, Wynendaele E, De Spiegeleer B. Related impurities in peptide medicines. Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis 2014;101:2–30. doi:10.1016/j.jpba.2014.06.012 · PMID 25044089

Identifiers are reproduced only where the Institute holds them. Where a digital object identifier or PubMed identifier is not shown, the Institute has recorded the journal and year and has not constructed an identifier.

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