Epithalon carries larger claims than almost anything else on this site, and a thinner dose record. The claims — longer life, restored melatonin rhythm, lengthened telomeres — mostly belong to Epithalamin, a pineal extract studied in Russia and Ukraine since the 1970s. The vial on the research market holds the synthetic tetrapeptide that was designed from that extract, and the published human record for the tetrapeptide is two studies with a stated dose, neither of them by injection under the skin. This page separates the two substances, reports every figure with its source, and converts them into the concentrations and syringe units a vial produces. It reports and does not recommend.
The Epithalon calculator runs the same sums for any vial and volume; the dosage hub indexes every compound here, and the all-compounds chart carries the one-line version beside every other compound.
Two substances, one set of claims
Epithalamin is a polypeptide extract of cattle pineal gland, named in the literature in 1973. Epithalon is Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly, four amino acids, synthesised on the basis of that extract's composition. Almost every widely repeated claim about this compound — the mortality reductions, the melatonin rhythm normalisation, the geroprotection — was measured on the extract.
The census makes the split countable. On 2026-09-20, PubMed held 115 records for Epitalon or Epithalon in title or abstract and 102 for Epithalamin. Applying the clinical-trial publication tag leaves one record for the tetrapeptide and six for the extract. A reader looking for the trial evidence behind a vial of tetrapeptide is therefore looking at a literature that is mostly about something else — and the vial's own label, where one exists at all, names only the tetrapeptide.
What the human record states, and for which substance
| Study | Substance | Subjects | Dose and route | Opened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Neuro Endocrinol Lett, PMID 12195242 (2002); dose as described in PMID 40141333 (2025) | Tetrapeptide | 162 patients with retinitis pigmentosa, 18 to 72 | 5.0 mcg per eye, parabulbar, 10 consecutive days | 2026-09-20 |
| Circadian study described in PMID 40141333 (2025) | Tetrapeptide | 75 women | 0.5 mg/day sublingually, 20 days | 2026-09-20 |
| Bull Exp Biol Med, PMID 22451889 (2011) | Extract | 39 coronary patients, 40 controls | Six courses over three years; amount not in the abstract | 2026-09-20 |
| Neuro Endocrinol Lett, PMID 14523363 (2003) | Extract, alone and with Thymalin | 266 elderly people, 6 to 8 years of follow-up | Courses over the first 2 to 3 years; amount not in the abstract | 2026-09-20 |
| Bull Exp Biol Med, PMID 15452611 (2004) | Extract | Healthy elderly subjects | Course treatment; amount not in the abstract | 2026-09-20 |
| Bull Exp Biol Med, PMID 12937682 (2003) | Tetrapeptide | Human fetal fibroblast culture | Added to the medium — no person dosed | 2026-09-20 |
Two things stand out. The extract studies, which carry the mortality results, mostly do not state an amount in their abstracts at all — so the numbers circulating as "the Epithalon protocol" cannot have come from them. And the two tetrapeptide figures that do exist are a per-eye injection and a sublingual course, at 5 micrograms and 0.5 milligrams: a thousand-fold apart from each other, and by routes that have nothing to do with a syringe under the skin.
One detail belongs with the most-cited paper. The 15-year follow-up's title calls the preparation "a peptide geroprotector from the pituitary gland" while its own abstract describes epithalamin and the pineal gland throughout. The study is what it is; the mismatch is simply worth knowing about in the record most often pointed to, and it is visible in the abstract itself.
The arithmetic per vial
The calculator's presets for this compound are the 10 mg and 50 mg vials. One U-100 unit is a hundredth of a millilitre (MedlinePlus, "Giving an insulin injection", reviewed 2024-07-21). The right-hand columns are the published sublingual daily amount and the two figures that circulate for the vial.
| Vial and water | mcg/mL | mcg per unit | 500 mcg | 5,000 mcg | 10,000 mcg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 mg in 1 mL | 10,000 | 100 | 5 units | 50 | 100 |
| 10 mg in 2 mL | 5,000 | 50 | 10 | 100 | 200 |
| 10 mg in 3 mL | 3,333 | 33.3 | 15 | 150 | 300 |
| 50 mg in 1 mL | 50,000 | 500 | 1 | 10 | 20 |
| 50 mg in 3 mL | 16,667 | 166.7 | 3 | 30 | 60 |
| 50 mg in 5 mL | 10,000 | 100 | 5 | 50 | 100 |
The 50 mg vial in 1 mL is the row that shows why volume matters: one unit holds 500 mcg, so the entire published sublingual daily amount is a single unit, and a half-unit misreading is half of it. The 10 mg vial in 3 mL sits at the other end, where the 10 mg circulating figure comes to 300 units — three full syringes, which is a sign that the figure and the vial were not designed for each other. Every row holds exactly the same peptide; the water changes only how many units it is spread across, which is the point the reconstitution hub makes for every compound.
A molar view makes the scale plainer. Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly weighs 390.35 g/mol, so a 10 mg vial holds 25.6 micromoles — a very large number of molecules for a very small mass. The 0.5 mg sublingual day is 1.28 micromoles, one twentieth of the vial; the 5 microgram eye dose is 12.8 nanomoles, one two-thousandth of it.
What the figures omit
The tetrapeptide's two human figures carry small populations, short courses of 10 and 20 days, and routes — into the tissue behind the eye, and under the tongue — chosen for the question each study asked. They do not carry a subcutaneous dose, a pharmacokinetic profile, a dose-finding study, or any long-term safety data in people. The extract's figures carry longer follow-up and mortality outcomes, and belong to a different preparation that cannot be bought as a vial of Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly. The cell-culture telomere results carry concentrations in a dish, which do not convert into an amount in a syringe at all. The mechanism and the evidence file are covered in Medibact's Epithalon guide; Peptifact's Epitalon dosage page reads the same literature from the journalism side.
What this page does not do
It does not state an amount of Epithalon to use, a frequency, a course or a route. It separates the tetrapeptide from the extract, reports the published figures for each with their sources and dates, and converts them into concentrations and U-100 syringe units at each vial size. Decisions about administering anything to a person belong with a clinician.
Sources and dates
Opened 2026-09-20: PubMed through the NCBI E-utilities for Epitalon or Epithalon in title or abstract (115 records) and Epithalamin (102 records), each with the clinical-trial publication-type filter (1 and 6 records), and the abstracts of PMIDs 12195242, 22451889, 14523363, 15452611, 12937682, 15455129 and 25535022 read; the open-access full text of "Overview of Epitalon — Highly Bioactive Pineal Tetrapeptide with Promising Properties", Int J Mol Sci 2025, PMID 40141333, through PubMed Central (PMC11943447), sections 2.6 and the animal dosing tables; the ClinicalTrials.gov v2 API for Epitalon and Epithalon as interventions (no records); the DailyMed SPL search API for Epitalon (no records); PubChem compound record 219042 for the sequence and molecular weight; MedlinePlus, "Giving an insulin injection" (reviewed 2024-07-21). The circulating vial figures are as recorded in this site's dosage chart on 2026-09-18. Corrections go to the contact page.