Bromantane (bromantan) is a synthetic adamantane derivative developed in the Soviet Union and Russia as an “actoprotector,” a drug meant to raise physical and mental work capacity under stress, and it is sold in Russia as a prescription medicine under the brand name Ladasten for asthenia (pathological fatigue). Russian laboratory studies suggest it works by increasing the brain’s production of dopamine rather than by releasing stored dopamine the way amphetamines do.

The most important facts for athletes and buyers: bromantane is named as a non-specified stimulant on the WADA Prohibited List and is banned in competition. It became an international doping story at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, when several athletes tested positive. It is not approved in the US or the EU, and almost all of its clinical evidence comes from Russian studies published in Russian journals, mostly from a small number of Russian research groups. Products sold online as “research chemicals” or nootropics are outside any drug-quality control.

This page summarizes what the published studies, anti-doping records and regulators report. It is for education only and is not medical advice.

Property	Detail
Class	Adamantane derivative; “actoprotector” (synthetic adaptogen); psychostimulant with reported anti-anxiety effects
Chemical name	N-(4-bromophenyl)adamantan-2-amine; C₁₆H₂₀BrN, 306.24 g/mol
Brand	Ladasten (Russia)
Route	Oral
Doses studied	50–100 mg/day for 28 days (Russian multicenter asthenia study); 15 mg single test doses
Pharmacokinetics	Oral bioavailability about 42%; peak blood levels at 2.75 h (women) and 4 h (men); highly fat-soluble; metabolites detectable in urine up to two weeks after dosing
Approved use	Russia: asthenic disorders (Ladasten)
US and EU status	No FDA approval; not on DEA schedules; described as a research chemical in the EU and Australia
WADA status	Prohibited in competition, S6.A non-specified stimulant (2026 list)

What it is

Bromantane is N-(2-adamantyl)-N-(para-bromophenyl)amine, an adamantane (a rigid cage-shaped hydrocarbon) linked to a bromine-substituted benzene ring (PubChem).

It belongs to a class of Soviet-developed drugs called actoprotectors, described as “preparations that enhance body stability against physical loads without increasing oxygen consumption or heat production” (Oliynyk and Oh, Biomol Ther 2012). According to that review:

actoprotector research began in the 1970s at the Military Medical Academy in Leningrad, for space, sports and military medicine;
after 1991, bromantane production continued in Russia, with its use initially limited mainly to sports medicine;
bromantane (as Ladasten) is registered in Russia as a drug, and it is now used mainly to treat patients with asthenic and anxious-asthenic disorders.

At the 1996 Olympics, a Russian Olympic Committee official told reporters that the Russian military had developed bromantan as an immune-system strengthening substance and that military doctors had used it to treat cosmonauts (Moscow Times 1996). These claims come from a news report, not a scientific source.

Other drugs from the Russian and Soviet pharmacopeia with pages in this library include meldonium, phenylpiracetam, Semax, Selank and Noopept.

Mechanism: dopamine synthesis

Bromantane’s proposed mechanism differs from that of classic stimulants such as amphetamine. The evidence is from rats:

Gene expression. A single 50 mg/kg dose increased expression of the genes for tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) and DOPA decarboxylase (DDC), the two enzymes that make dopamine, in the striatum and hypothalamus. L-DOPA and dopamine accumulated in step with this gene activity. In the first hours, the effect was attributed to increased dopamine release; the authors concluded that the main action was “de novo synthesis” of TH and DDC (Vakhitova et al., Eksp Klin Farmakol 2004).
Monoamine levels. Acute and repeated 50 mg/kg oral doses changed dopamine measures and raised serotonin and its metabolite in the frontal cortex (Kudrin et al., Eksp Klin Farmakol 1995).
GABA system. In stress-sensitive rats, an anti-anxiety dose prevented stress-induced changes in binding at the benzodiazepine site of the GABA-A receptor (Iarkova et al., Eksp Klin Farmakol 2005).

The 2012 review summarizes the Russian literature as showing that bromantane works through the dopaminergic system without a marked effect on noradrenergic transmission, and that it also strengthens GABA signaling (Oliynyk and Oh 2012). These mechanisms have not been confirmed by independent groups outside Russia in the sources found.

Pharmacokinetics

Human pharmacokinetic data are available only in summary form. The 2012 review reports (Oliynyk and Oh 2012):

Parameter	Reported value
Oral absorption	Quick but incomplete; bioavailability about 42%
Time to peak	2.75 h in women, 4.0 h in men (absorption faster in women, with a correspondingly shorter half-life)
Distribution	Highly fat-soluble; distributes into brain lipids and is deposited in fat tissue; slowly eliminated
Metabolism	In the liver, mainly by hydroxylation at position 6 of the adamantane cage
Detection	All identified metabolites can be found in urine up to two weeks after a dose, which the review notes is important for doping control

The review cites a 1997 Lancet report by French researchers titled “Bromontan, a new doping agent” for the metabolism and detection findings (Burnat et al., Lancet 1997). A numerical half-life was not given in the sources we could open.

Approved medical use

Bromantane is approved in Russia as Ladasten for asthenic disorders (Oliynyk and Oh 2012). A 2025 European and Australian market surveillance study describes it as a prescription medication in Russia for “neurasthenia,” with a typical dosage of 50–100 mg/day (Vanhee et al., J Xenobiot 2025).

It has no approval in the US: a Drugs@FDA search returned no product with bromantane as an active ingredient (openFDA, accessed November 2026), and it does not appear in the DEA controlled-substance schedules (21 CFR 1308). The 2025 surveillance study by 12 European and Australian official medicines control laboratories classified it as a research chemical in the EU and Australia (Vanhee et al. 2025).

What the research shows

The Russian asthenia trials

Asthenia here means a syndrome of persistent fatigue, weakness and reduced capacity for work, often with anxiety and sleep problems; neurasthenia is a related older diagnosis. The clinical program for Ladasten ran through Russian research centers:

Study	Design	Main result (as reported in the abstract)
Siuniakov et al., Eksp Klin Farmakol 2006	Pilot clinical trial in psychogenic asthenic disorder	Described a combined stimulant and anti-anxiety effect, with the stimulant action predominating after single doses
Neznamov et al., Zh Nevrol Psikhiatr 2009	Randomized, blind, placebo-controlled study in neurasthenia: washout, 28 days of Ladasten or placebo, then 1 week of placebo	Ladasten reduced the main asthenic symptoms faster and to a greater degree than placebo; no withdrawal syndrome when it was stopped. The abstract does not give patient numbers or effect sizes
Voznesenskaia et al., Zh Nevrol Psikhiatr 2010	Multicenter study at 28 Russian clinical centers; 728 patients with asthenic disorders analyzed; 50–100 mg/day for 28 days	76.0% responders on the CGI-S and 90.8% on the CGI-I scales; effect seen from day 3 and maintained 1 month after stopping. Adverse effects in 3%, discontinuation in 0.8%, no serious adverse effects. The abstract describes no placebo or comparison group
Reutova et al., Eksp Klin Farmakol 2011	Single 15 mg test doses vs placebo in neurasthenia patients	Self-rated tolerability comparable to placebo

CGI-S and CGI-I are clinician-rated global scales of illness severity and improvement. Several important limits apply:

The largest study had no control group, so its 76–91% response rates cannot separate drug effect from placebo response, natural recovery or rater expectation.
The placebo-controlled trial’s abstract reports no sample size or effect size, and the full text is in Russian.
Later analyses from the same group found that both Ladasten and placebo were rated as more effective by patients with certain EEG patterns and personality traits (Neznamov et al., Eksp Klin Farmakol 2012), underlining a substantial placebo component.
No trial was found from outside Russia, and none was found in a Western registry.

Healthy volunteers

In 10 healthy volunteers given a single oral dose vs placebo, bromantane produced EEG changes the authors associated with moderately raised vigilance and less tremor, but it did not alter subjective state or the main measures of task performance in men who were not tired (Viatleva et al., Voen Med Zh 2000).

Physical performance

The claim that bromantane improves physical work capacity, resistance to overheating and recovery is based mainly on animal experiments and Russian reviews (Oliynyk and Oh 2012). We found no controlled human trial of bromantane that measured exercise performance.

Side effects and risks

Reported tolerability. In the 728-patient multicenter study, adverse effects occurred in 3% and led to stopping in 0.8%, with no serious adverse effects reported (Voznesenskaia et al. 2010). The 2012 review describes “almost full absence of side effects,” including withdrawal and overstimulation (Oliynyk and Oh 2012). These statements come from sponsor-linked Russian sources and have not been tested in independent trials.
Animal toxicity at high doses. In rats given bromantane for months, 30 mg/kg raised hemoglobin and white cells, while 150 and 600 mg/kg first raised and then lowered red cells, hemoglobin and white cells, with reversible agranulocytosis (loss of a type of white blood cell) and liver and spleen changes. The authors suggested that blood tissue is a “target” of bromantane toxicity (Bugaeva et al., Eksp Klin Farmakol 1999).
Liver enzyme induction. The 2012 review states that bromantane stimulates cytochrome P450 synthesis and reduced the sleep-inducing effect of thiopental in animals (Oliynyk and Oh 2012). Enzyme induction could in principle lower blood levels of other drugs; human interaction studies were not found.
Unregulated products. In the 2020–2024 European and Australian surveillance study, bromantane was detected in 2 samples from 2 laboratories, at up to 33.2 mg per unit, among 159 samples of illicit nootropics, about half of which were presented as dietary supplements (Vanhee et al. 2025). Products bought online are not made under drug-quality controls.
Pregnancy and long-term use. No human data were found.

Legal status and use in sport

The 1996 Atlanta Olympics

Bromantan became internationally known at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta:

On July 28, 1996, the IOC stripped two Russian athletes of bronze medals after positive tests for bromantan: swimmer Andrei Korneyev (200 m breaststroke) and Greco-Roman wrestler Zafar Gouliev. Lithuanian cyclist Rita Razmaite also tested positive. An IOC spokesperson said the drug “enhances performance and can be considered a masking agent” and that it had not previously been found at the Games (Deseret News, July 29, 1996).
Russian swimmer Nina Zhivanevskaya was disqualified for the same drug days later. The IOC acknowledged that bromantan was “not itself on the list of prohibited drugs,” while calling it a virtual copy of drugs that were. The Russian Olympic Committee did not deny that the athletes had used it and appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) (Moscow Times 1996).
Korneyev argued before CAS that bromantan was not a stimulant. The court ruled in his favor and his bronze medal was restored (Olympedia).

The case showed how hard it was at the time to sanction a substance that was not named on the list.

Current status

Bromantan is now named explicitly. On the WADA 2026 Prohibited List it appears in section S6.A, non-specified stimulants, prohibited in competition (WADA 2026 Prohibited List). Because metabolites can remain detectable in urine for up to two weeks (Oliynyk and Oh 2012), use in the days before competition carries a high detection risk. Other stimulants on the same S6.A list include modafinil, adrafinil and fonturacetam (phenylpiracetam).

Key takeaways

A Russian “actoprotector.” Bromantane is an adamantane derivative sold in Russia as Ladasten for asthenia, at 50–100 mg/day in the main clinical study.
Dopamine synthesis, per rat studies. Russian experiments found it raised expression of tyrosine hydroxylase and DOPA decarboxylase, the enzymes that make dopamine; this has not been confirmed independently.
Evidence is thin and local. The 728-patient Russian study had no control group, the placebo-controlled trial’s abstract gives no numbers, and no trials were found outside Russia.
Banned in sport. It is a WADA S6.A non-specified stimulant, prohibited in competition, and metabolites can persist in urine for about two weeks.
A 1996 Olympic doping case. Several athletes tested positive in Atlanta; the IOC conceded the drug was not itself on its list, and CAS later restored Korneyev’s bronze medal.
Not approved outside Russia. It has no FDA or EU approval and appears in illicit nootropic products sold online.

Sources

National Center for Biotechnology Information. Bromantane (CID 4660557). PubChem. PubChem.
Oliynyk S, Oh S. The pharmacology of actoprotectors: practical application for improvement of mental and physical performance. Biomol Ther (Seoul). 2012;20(5):446–456. PubMed.
The Moscow Times. Russians fume as 3rd Olympian disqualified. 1996. Moscow Times.
Vakhitova IuV, Iamidanov RS, Seredinin SB. [Ladasten induces the expression of genes regulating dopamine biosynthesis in various structures of rat brain]. Eksp Klin Farmakol. 2004;67(4):7–11. PubMed.
Kudrin VS, Sergeeva SA, Krasnykh LM, Miroshnichenko II, Grekhova TV, Gainetdinov RR. [The effect of bromantane on the dopamin- and serotoninergic systems of the rat brain]. Eksp Klin Farmakol. 1995;58(4):8–11. PubMed.
Iarkova MA, Voronin MV, Seredenin SB. [Studying the mechanisms of ladasten action]. Eksp Klin Farmakol. 2005;68(3):3–6. PubMed.
Burnat P, Payen A, Le Brumant-Payen C, Hugon M, Ceppa F. Bromontan, a new doping agent. Lancet. 1997;350(9082):963–964. PubMed.
Vanhee C, Deconinck E, George M, et al. The occurrence of illicit smart drugs or nootropics in Europe and Australia and their associated dangers: results from a market surveillance study by 12 official medicines control laboratories. J Xenobiot. 2025;15(3):88. PubMed.
US Food and Drug Administration. openFDA Drugs@FDA dataset: search for active ingredient bromantane (no matching records; accessed November 2026). openFDA.
Drug Enforcement Administration. Schedules of controlled substances. 21 CFR part 1308. eCFR.
Siuniakov SA, Grishin SA, Teleshova ES, Neznamov GG, Seredenin SB. [Pilot clinical trial of ladasten]. Eksp Klin Farmakol. 2006;69(4):10–15. PubMed.
Neznamov GG, Siuniakov SA, Teleshova SE, et al. [Ladasten, the new drug with psychostimulant and anxiolytic actions in treatment of neurasthenia (results of the comparative clinical study with placebo)]. Zh Nevrol Psikhiatr Im S S Korsakova. 2009;109(5):20–26. PubMed.
Voznesenskaia TG, Fokina NM, Iakhno NN. [Treatment of asthenic disorders in patients with psychoautonomic syndrome: results of a multicenter study on efficacy and safety of ladasten]. Zh Nevrol Psikhiatr Im S S Korsakova. 2010;110(5 Pt 1):17–26. PubMed.
Reutova MA, Siuniakov SA, Siuniakov TS, Dorofeeva OA, Mametova LE, Neznamov GG. [Self-evaluation of single test doses and objective indices of ladasten vs. placebo efficacy in neurasthenic patients]. Eksp Klin Farmakol. 2011;74(11):6–13. PubMed.
Neznamov GG, Bochkarev VK, Reutova MA, Shabanova AA, Siuniakov SA. [Ladasten versus placebo effect self-evaluated by neurasthenia patients with different EEG alpha rhythm types]. Eksp Klin Farmakol. 2012;75(5):7–13. PubMed.
Viatleva OA, Barchukov VG, Morozov IS, Salenko IuA, Zhirnov EN. [The neuro- and psychophysiological effects of bromantane]. Voen Med Zh. 2000;321(8):61–65. PubMed.
Bugaeva LI, Spasov AA, Morozov IS. [The effect of bromantane on the erythro- and leukocytic profile of the peripheral blood in rats]. Eksp Klin Farmakol. 1999;62(4):40–43. PubMed.
Deseret News. Two Russian athletes stripped of medals. July 29, 1996. Deseret News.
Olympedia. Swimming at the 1996 Summer Olympics: 200 metres breaststroke, men. Olympedia.
World Anti-Doping Agency. The 2026 Prohibited List. In force January 1, 2026. WADA.

Bromantane