Doses studied
Epitalon dosage in the research record — by species, route, and schedule
What was administered to which model, why protocols are cycled, and the honest gap where a human pharmacokinetic study should be.
The short version
This page describes the Epitalon doses used in studies. It is not a how-to, and there is no recommended human dose anywhere on this site. In the animal work, the typical amount was tiny — about one microgram (a millionth of a gram) per mouse, given by injection under the skin for five days a month, not every day. In lab dishes, researchers used concentrations in the range of a microgram per milliliter. Studies tend to cycle the peptide — short bursts with long gaps — rather than dose it continuously, mirroring the animal protocols. One honest gap matters: no one has published a proper human pharmacokinetic study (a measurement of how fast the body clears it), so the "half-life in minutes" figure you may see quoted is an educated guess from peptide chemistry, not a measured Epitalon value. Everything below is reported strictly as what was given to which species, by which route.
Epitalon dosage as recorded in studies
The Epitalon dosage figures in the literature are research quantities, attributed to a species and route. In the SHR-mouse lifespan study, the schedule was 1.0 ug per mouse (roughly 30-40 ug/kg) subcutaneously, five consecutive days each month from three months of age [3]. Lower-dose rodent carcinogenesis schedules used 0.1 ug per mouse, and the rat colon-carcinogenesis model used a single 1 ug subcutaneous dose [8]. In the 2025 human cell-line telomere work, concentrations were 0.1, 0.2, 0.5, and 1 ug/mL applied to cells over days to weeks [5]. The Russian clinical and observational work with the parent extract used parenteral courses over roughly 10-20 day cycles, on schedules that were never standardized to FDA or EMA reporting conventions [2]. None of these is a human dose recommendation.
Routes studied
Subcutaneous injection is the predominant route in the rodent and reported human work [3]. In-vitro studies add the peptide directly to the culture medium [1][5]. A separate study used the intranasal route to examine effects on rat neocortical neuron activity [14], and the Russian clinical and observational studies used parenteral administration of the parent extract [2]. Route matters because a short, unmodified peptide behaves very differently when injected, applied to cells, or delivered nasally — and none of the routes has a published human pharmacokinetic profile.
Epitalon half life
There is no published Epitalon half life study in humans. As an unmodified linear tetrapeptide, Epitalon is expected to undergo rapid breakdown by enzymes in the blood, consistent with the very short half-lives — generally measured in minutes — seen for small peptides as a class; but this is an inference from peptide chemistry, not a measured Epitalon value [4]. The practical consequence is honesty about uncertainty: the often-repeated "few minutes" figure should be read as a class expectation, not a characterized property of this molecule, and the cycled dosing schedules in the animal studies were set by protocol design rather than by any human pharmacokinetic measurement.
Why protocols cycle the peptide
The animal lifespan and carcinogenesis studies that define the Epitalon record used cyclical schedules — a short run of daily injections, then a long gap, repeated monthly or seasonally — rather than continuous administration [3]. In the research literature this pattern follows the original Russian protocol design and the framing of Epitalon as a periodic "reset" of the neuroendocrine ageing axis rather than a continuously-present drug. It is a description of how the studies were run, not a recommendation for any schedule in humans.
Handling and stability in research practice
Lyophilized (freeze-dried) peptide is typically stored at -20 C. In research practice, solution reconstituted in bacteriostatic water is refrigerated at 2-8 C and used within a few weeks, and repeated freeze-thaw cycling is avoided because it degrades short peptides. These are general research-handling conventions, not manufacturer directions or clinical instructions, and they say nothing about safe human use — which remains uncharacterized.