Epitalon

A synthetic four-amino-acid peptide (Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly), designed from the amino acid make-up of epithalamin, an extract of the pineal gland of cattle. Research on epithalamin was led from 1973 by V.K. Khavinson and V.N. Anisimov. It is marketed as a longevity peptide.

Sold as

Sold for injection under the skin. The circadian-rhythm study cited here used a form dissolved under the tongue; the retinitis pigmentosa study used injection near the eye.

Legal status in the EU

Not approved as a medicine in the EU or anywhere else. The authors of the 2025 review conclude that further short- and long-term toxicity studies are needed before epitalon could be approved as an active substance. Epitalon is not named on the doping list, but it falls under section S0 for non-approved substances, and it was among the banned substances SVT's 2026 investigation found in products sold in Sweden.

According to a 2025 review, how it works is still unclear. In cell culture, untreated skin cells stopped dividing after 34 rounds, while epitalon-treated cells kept dividing past 44. Whether anything similar happens in living human tissue has not been shown.

Part of the bodyWhat happensHow it is knownKind of evidence

Melatonin, and the body clock

Melatonin is the hormone the pineal gland releases at night to tell the body it is dark. In the one randomised study, women whose melatonin output had dropped to the level normally seen in elderly people were given epitalon as a spray under the tongue. Over twenty days the amount of melatonin breakdown product in their urine rose back towards the normal level for their age. It did not move in the women given a salt-water spray. Three of the genes that run the body's daily clock also shifted back towards normal levels.

One randomised study against a dummy spray in 75 healthy women aged 40 to 50, most of them night-shift workers. Only 20 of them received epitalon, for 20 days. The publication did not say whether anyone was blinded, and it did not measure sleep.

One small study

Source [06]Source [07]

The eyes, in one inherited retinal disease

Retinitis pigmentosa is an inherited disease in which the light-sensing layer at the back of the eye slowly dies and the field of vision closes in from the edges. In the eye study, epitalon was injected into the tissue around the eyeball once a day for ten days. The report describes sharper vision and a wider field of view. There was no dummy injection. The comparison group received the standard eye medicines of 2002.

162 patients aged 18 to 72, treated for 10 consecutive days, reported by the group that developed the peptide. A positive clinical effect was reported in 90 per cent of cases. It has never been repeated by anyone, anywhere.

One small study

Source [01]Source [08]

How long animals live, and whether they get tumours

This is where nearly all of the longevity claim comes from. Mice were given tiny amounts under the skin for five days a month, from young adulthood until they died naturally. They lived slightly longer on average in one strain and no longer at all in another. The oldest animals in the treated groups outlived the oldest controls, and fewer of them developed certain tumours. In rats kept under a normal day and night cycle, epitalon changed nothing about how long they lived.

Fifty female CBA mice per group, 0.1 microgram each, five days a month from six months old until natural death: average survival 5.3 per cent longer and maximum lifespan 10 months longer than saline. Fifty-four female SHR mice per group, 1 microgram each, five days a month from three months old: average lifespan unchanged, the last ten per cent of survivors lived 13.3 per cent longer, maximum lifespan 12.3 per cent longer, total tumour rate unchanged, leukaemia six times less common. All of these studies came from the same research group. Each used a single fixed amount, so none of them shows whether more or less would do more or less.

Only seen in animals

Source [09]Source [10]Source [11]

Night-time hormones, in old monkeys

Old rhesus monkeys were given a daily injection into the muscle for ten days. On the last day their evening melatonin was more than four times higher than in the animals given salt water. Their evening cortisol fell by about 30 per cent. Cortisol is the stress hormone, and it should drop between morning and evening; in these old animals that drop had been lost, and the injections brought it back. Young monkeys given the same injections showed no melatonin change at all, and nobody watched whether any of the animals slept differently.

Female rhesus monkeys, 2 micrograms per kilogram of body weight into the muscle once a day for 10 days, blood drawn at 9 in the morning and 9 at night on the last day. Only one amount was tested. It is not known whether the effect came from that last injection or built up over the ten days.

Only seen in animals

Source [07]Source [12]

Telomeres, in cells in a dish

Telomeres are the caps on the ends of chromosomes. They get shorter every time a cell divides, and when they run out the cell stops dividing. Telomerase is the enzyme that rebuilds them, and it is switched off in most adult cells. Added to human cells growing in a dish, epitalon switches the enzyme back on and the telomeres get longer. In one experiment, lung cells from a foetus stopped dividing after 34 rounds; treated cells managed ten more. An independent laboratory in London repeated the lengthening in 2025. In the two breast cancer lines it tested, the telomeres grew through a second route that cancers use to bypass the enzyme.

Cells in plastic dishes, not in a body. Human foetal lung cells with 50 nanograms per millilitre for four days; normal fibroblasts and normal breast cells with 1 microgram per millilitre for three weeks; two breast cancer cell lines for four days. No published study has ever measured telomere length in a living person given epitalon.

Only seen in a dish, not in a body

Source [13]Source [14]Source [15]

Sleep

Better and deeper sleep is what epitalon is most often sold for, and insomnia is the use its supporters formally put to the US regulator. There is no measurement of sleep anywhere in the literature. Not a sleep laboratory, not an overnight brain recording, not a questionnaire, not in a person and not in an animal. The 20-day study in women that moved the melatonin marker did not ask anyone how they slept.

The US medicines regulator searched the published literature, two adverse-event databases, the trials register and the sleep specialists' own treatment guideline. It found no animal study of epitalon on sleep behaviour or on brain recordings, and no study of epitalon in people with insomnia. Epitalon is not mentioned in the sleep guideline at all.

Claimed, never tested

Source [07]

The review by Araj and Szeleszczuk (International Journal of Molecular Sciences 2025, Medical University of Warsaw) identifies two clinical studies: one in 162 patients aged 18–72 with retinitis pigmentosa, where visual sharpness was reported to improve and 64.8 per cent got a wider field of vision, and one in 75 women where melatonin production was reported to rise 1.6-fold compared with placebo. Both come from the same research tradition that developed the peptide, and neither has been independently repeated. No human study has measured telomere length before and after treatment.

Unknown, because nobody has measured what the peptide does once it is in a body. The US regulator reported in 2026 that it found no study of how epitalon is absorbed, distributed or cleared, in a person or in an animal. The one thing close to it is a 2005 experiment that followed a fluorescent label through pregnant rabbits, one hour after a single injection into a vein. The regulator warns that the label may not have been tracking epitalon at all. What is on record is how long the studies ran: 20 days for the melatonin change in women, 10 days for the eye injections, 10 days for the monkeys. The longest anyone has been given epitalon in a published study is 20 days. The 2025 review notes that short peptides like this one are typically unstable and broken down quickly in the body. It also notes that nobody has tested a chemically modified version that would last longer.

What was measuredWhat happenedIn whomHow it is known

Melatonin output, measured as its breakdown product in the urine

Rose 1.7-fold over 20 days on epitalon, measured against the women's own starting level. It did not change on the dummy spray. Before treatment, the women in both groups had levels 1.7 times lower than women of the same age with normal output.

40 healthy women aged 40 to 50 with reduced melatonin output, most of them night-shift workers, split into 20 on epitalon and 20 on a salt-water spray for 20 days, alongside 35 women with normal output who were not treated

One small study

Source [06]Source [07]

How the women said they felt

The authors reported improvement in mood and general physical condition in 83 per cent of those on epitalon against 25 per cent on the dummy spray. They did not describe how either was assessed, so there is no way to check what was counted as an improvement.

The same 40 women, 20 in each group, over 20 days

One small study

Source [07]

Body-clock genes in blood cells

All three genes were abnormal in these women before treatment. Two that were running too high, Clock and Csnk1e, came down by 1.9 to 2.1 times. One that was running too low, Cry2, doubled.

The same 40 women with reduced melatonin output, 20 days

One small study

Source [06]

Sharpness of vision and width of the field of view

Visual sharpness rose by 0.15 to 0.20 on average. In 64.8 per cent of patients the outer border of the field of view widened by 90 to 120 degrees. There was no dummy injection: the comparison group was given the conventional eye medicines of the day.

162 patients aged 18 to 72 with retinitis pigmentosa, injected around the eye once a day for 10 days

One small study

Source [01]Source [08]

How long mice lived

CBA mice: average survival 5.3 per cent longer than saline, maximum lifespan 10 months longer. SHR mice: no difference in average lifespan at all, but the last tenth of survivors lived 13.3 per cent longer and maximum lifespan was 12.3 per cent longer. Mice carrying a breast cancer gene lived 13.5 per cent longer on average.

Female mice only, 50 to 54 per group, dosed under the skin for five days each month from young adulthood until natural death

Only seen in animals

Source [09]Source [10]Source [16]

Evening melatonin and evening cortisol in monkeys

In the old monkeys, evening melatonin rose more than four-fold against salt water. Evening cortisol fell by about 30 per cent, which brought back the day-to-night difference these animals had lost. Morning levels of both were unchanged. In the young monkeys the same injections did nothing to melatonin.

Female rhesus monkeys, old (20 to 26 years) and young (6 to 8 years), 2 micrograms per kilogram into the muscle daily for 10 days

Only seen in animals

Source [07]Source [12]

Telomere length in human cells in a dish

In one breast cancer cell line, telomeres went from about 2,400 to about 4,000 base pairs in four days. In a second they peaked at about 8,000. Normal fibroblasts and normal breast cells also lengthened over three weeks. The two cancer lines did it through the route cancers use to bypass the enzyme, which rose ten-fold in one and three-fold in the other. The normal cells did it through the enzyme itself.

Human cell lines in plastic dishes: two breast cancer lines at 0.1 to 1 microgram per millilitre for four days, normal fibroblasts and normal breast cells at 1 microgram per millilitre for three weeks

Only seen in a dish, not in a body

Source [15]Source [17]

Safety data is largely absent — the 2025 review states that information on key safety questions is missing from the papers it examined. Switching on the enzyme that maintains telomeres is theoretically linked to cells becoming immortal and to tumour biology, and this has not been evaluated in humans. Short peptides like epitalon are, according to the review, typically unstable and broken down quickly in the body.

EffectWhat it feels likeHow often

Cancer risk from switching the telomere-rebuilding enzyme onSerious

Cells normally stop dividing when their telomeres run out, and that limit is one of the things that stops a damaged cell becoming a tumour. Epitalon's entire selling point is that it removes the limit. The US regulator wrote in 2026 that unusually long telomeres are associated with a higher risk of cancer. It wrote that continuous exposure could let cells escape ageing and become cancerous, and that no two-year cancer study of epitalon exists. In the mouse studies that report fewer tumours the peptide was given for five days a month. The regulator worked that out as at most about 22 weeks of exposure across a roughly two-year life, and only female mice were used. That is far too little to answer the question. In the 2025 London cell study, the breast cancer cells lengthened their telomeres through the same route real tumours use.

Never measured in anyone. No study of any length has looked.

Source [07]Source [15]

An immune reaction to the injection itselfSerious

Peptides can clump together in the vial, and the body can start making antibodies against the clumps. The regulator writes that the result can range from antibodies with nothing noticeable happening to a life-threatening reaction. It raised this specifically for epitalon in 2026. It noted that injecting under the skin — the route epitalon is sold for — generally carries more of this risk than a drip into a vein. With no information about the impurities in the powder, it could not rule the risk out.

Never measured. No study of epitalon has ever tested for it.

Source [07]

Contamination in a vial that is going to be injectedSerious

Anything injected has to be sterile and free of the bacterial fragments that cause fever. The certificate of analysis the regulator examined in 2026 tested purity, but carried no result for bacterial contamination and no result for bacterial toxins. It allowed a single impurity of up to 1 per cent without saying what that impurity is. The regulator also noted that epitalon does not dissolve well in water. It said that it may not be possible to make the peptide up as an injection at 3 milligrams per millilitre using water as the solvent.

Never measured for the products people buy.

Source [07]

What was recorded in the published human studies

This is an absence of reporting rather than an absence of harm. Neither study describes how side effects were looked for, over what period, or by whom. The regulator's conclusion in 2026 was that no clinical study assessing the safety of epitalon in humans exists.

None of the patients given epitalon in the 162-person eye study reported a side effect. The 20-day study in 20 women reported no safety data at all.

Source [01]Source [07]

Reports sent to the US medicines regulator by doctors and the public

Zero reports is not a clean safety record. Almost nobody files a report about something bought from a website, and the regulator notes that pharmacies making up their own preparations generally do not report to it at all. An empty database means nobody is watching, not that nothing happened.

Zero. The regulator searched its adverse-event database for epitalon through 8 December 2025 and retrieved no reports. It searched its food and supplement complaint system through 5 December 2025 and retrieved no cases.

Source [07]

These are the amounts the studies below gave their participants, and they are here as facts about those studies. They are not a recommendation, not a starting point and not a range to pick from. What a person should take, if anything, is a question for a doctor who knows them.

Ivko et al., the only randomised study in people that used a dummy spray — melatonin output and body-clock genes in night-shift workers

0.5 mg a day, as three sprays under the tongue twice a day, against three sprays of salt water twice a day

20 days

Source [06]Source [07]

Khavinson et al. 2002, 162 patients with retinitis pigmentosa, the only other published study to give epitalon to a person

5.0 micrograms per eye, injected into the tissue around the eyeball

10 consecutive days

Source [01]Source [08]

Anisimov et al. 2003, in mice, not people — female SHR mice, the lifespan and tumour study behind most of the longevity claim

1 microgram per mouse, roughly 30 to 40 micrograms per kilogram of body weight, injected under the skin, against 0.1 ml of saline

Five consecutive days every month, from three months old until natural death

Source [10]

Goncharova et al. 2001, in monkeys, not people — old and young rhesus monkeys, melatonin and cortisol

2 micrograms per kilogram of body weight, injected into the muscle at 9 in the morning, against saline

10 days

Source [07]Source [12]

What people report

• Whether epitalon changes telomere length in a living person — the claim it is sold on has only ever been tested on cells in a dish.
• What happens to the peptide once it is in a body: how much is absorbed, where it goes, how fast it is broken down. No study of any kind exists, in a person or an animal.
• Whether it does anything to sleep, which is the use its supporters formally proposed — no sleep measurement of any sort exists.
• Whether it is safe. There is no single-dose toxicity study, no repeated-dose toxicity study, no study of effects on fertility or on a developing pregnancy, and no long-term cancer study.
• Whether switching on the telomere-rebuilding enzyme raises cancer risk in a person over years, which is the mechanism's obvious question and has never been examined.
• What happens after 20 days, the longest anyone has taken it in a published study.
• What it does when injected under the skin, the way it is actually sold and used.
• Whether the results from the institute that invented it hold up elsewhere — the eye study, the melatonin study and the mouse lifespan studies have never been repeated by an independent group.
• Whether it provokes antibodies against itself, which has never been tested.
• Whether it does anything in a person whose melatonin output is already normal — in the one randomised study only women with reduced output were treated, and in monkeys it did nothing to melatonin in the young animals.
• What is actually in the vials sold online, and whether they are sterile: the certificate of analysis the regulator examined carried no bacterial contamination result and did not name the impurities it allows.

Does it lengthen telomeres in a person?

Nobody has checked. Every telomere measurement in the epitalon literature was made on human cells growing in a dish, including the independent 2025 replication from Brunel University London. No published study has taken a blood sample from a person before and after epitalon and measured telomere length. That is the compound's whole selling point and it has never been tested in a body.

Source [07]Source [15]

Isn't there a study showing that these peptides cut deaths in elderly people?

There is, and it is not about epitalon. That study followed 266 elderly people for six to eight years. It reported death rates 1.6 to 1.8 times lower in those given epithalamin, an extract of cattle pineal gland containing many substances. Epitalon is a single four-amino-acid peptide built from the amino acid make-up of that extract. The US regulator treats the two as different substances, and it says so about the epithalamin papers that were submitted to it in support of epitalon.

Source [07]Source [18]

It was given orphan drug status for an eye disease. Doesn't that mean it works?

No. Orphan designation is a set of incentives for developing a treatment for a rare disease. It is granted before anything is proven and says nothing about whether a substance is effective or safe. Epitalon received it for retinitis pigmentosa on 2 September 2010 and the designation was withdrawn on 6 January 2016. Nothing was approved.

Source [07]

Can a pharmacy legally make it up for me in the United States?

Not at present. Two nominations asked for epitalon to be added to the list of substances American pharmacies may compound with. Both were withdrawn, and the regulator carried on evaluating it anyway. Its assessment, dated 12 May 2026 and put to an advisory committee on 24 July 2026, proposed that neither form of epitalon be added. The reasons given were that the substance is not well characterised, that there is no evidence it works for the use proposed, that there is no human safety data, and that approved medicines for that use already exist.

Source [07]Source [19]

Are there any trials running now?

None are registered. A search of the United States clinical trials register returns no studies at all for epitalon, and none for the other spelling, epithalon — not completed, not recruiting, not planned. The regulator searched the same register and reported finding no clinical studies of safety or of effectiveness.

Source [07]Source [20]

The studies used a spray under the tongue and an injection into the eye. It is sold as an injection under the skin. Does that matter?

It matters and nobody knows by how much. No published study has ever given epitalon to a person under the skin. The nominations put to the US regulator proposed products for injection under the skin at 10 mg per millilitre and 3,000 micrograms per millilitre. The regulator noted that the peptide does not dissolve well in water and that no data exist for that route. It also noted that injecting a peptide under the skin generally carries more risk of an immune reaction than a drip into a vein. The clinic websites it looked at advertise 5 mg to 10 mg a day. That is ten to twenty times the 0.5 mg a day used in the only randomised study.

Source [07]

Each letter represents one amino acid.

1. [01]Overview of Epitalon — Highly Bioactive Pineal Tetrapeptide with Promising Properties (Int J Mol Sci 26(6):2691) (2025)
2. [02]Epitalon, PubChem synonymer (Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly)
3. [03]2023 doping list, Antidoping Sweden — S0, non-approved substances (in Swedish) (2023)
4. [04]SVT investigation: peptides contain banned substances — buyers can be prosecuted (in Swedish) (2026)
5. [05]Athlete Advisory: Explanation of Key Changes on 2022 WADA Prohibited List (definition av S0) (2022)
6. [06]Ivko, Linkova, Ilina, Sharova and Ryzhak, AEDG peptide regulates human circadian rhythm gene expression during accelerated pineal gland ageing (Adv Gerontol, in Russian) (2020)
7. [07]FDA briefing document, Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee, epitalon-related bulk drug substances (study design, group sizes and limitations of Ivko et al. 2021) (2026)
8. [08]Khavinson, Razumovsky, Trofimova, Grigorian and Razumovskaya, pineal-regulating tetrapeptide epitalon improves eye retina condition in retinitis pigmentosa (Neuro Endocrinol Lett) (2002)
9. [09]Anisimov, Khavinson, Mikhalski and Yashin, effect of synthetic thymic and pineal peptides on biomarkers of ageing, survival and spontaneous tumour incidence in female CBA mice (Mech Ageing Dev) (2001)
10. [10]Anisimov et al., effect of epitalon on biomarkers of aging, life span and spontaneous tumor incidence in female Swiss-derived SHR mice (Biogerontology) (2003)
11. [11]Vinogradova et al., effect of Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly peptide on life span and spontaneous tumours in female rats under different illumination regimes (Bull Exp Biol Med) (2007)
12. [12]Goncharova, Khavinson and Lapin, regulatory effect of epithalon on production of melatonin and cortisol in old monkeys (Bull Exp Biol Med) (2001)
13. [13]Khavinson, Bondarev and Butyugov, epithalon peptide induces telomerase activity and telomere elongation in human somatic cells (Bull Exp Biol Med) (2003)
14. [14]Khavinson, Bondarev, Butyugov and Smirnova, peptide promotes overcoming of the division limit in human somatic cells (Bull Exp Biol Med) — passage 34 against passage 44 (2004)
15. [15]Al-Dulaimi, Thomas, Matta and Roberts, epitalon increases telomere length in human cell lines through telomerase upregulation or ALT activity (Biogerontology, Brunel University London) (2025)
16. [16]Anisimov, Khavinson, Alimova, Semchenko and Yashin, epithalon decelerates aging and suppresses breast adenocarcinomas in transgenic her-2/neu mice (Bull Exp Biol Med) (2002)
17. [17]Correction to Al-Dulaimi et al., epitalon increases telomere length in human cell lines (Biogerontology) (2025)
18. [18]Khavinson and Morozov, peptides of pineal gland and thymus prolong human life (Neuro Endocrinol Lett) (2003)
19. [19]FDA briefing document introduction, Pharmacy Compounding Advisory Committee meeting, 23–24 July 2026 (points to consider, items 11 and 12) (2026)
20. [20]ClinicalTrials.gov search for epitalon — no studies found (2026)