Melanocortin & skin peptides
Safety notice. Melanotan II is not approved in any country. Indexed case reports link it to rhabdomyolysis, priapism, renal infarction, posterior reversible encephalopathy, and melanoma. Several national health agencies published warnings. Read the safety section of its profile in full.
Two compounds share a name prefix and almost nothing else. Confusing them is the single most consequential mistake a reader can make in this library.
Melanotan I is a medicine. Its approved name is afamelanotide and its brand name is Scenesse. It is a linear 13-amino-acid α-MSH analog that acts mostly at MC1R. Two multicenter randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials tested it in erythropoietic protoporphyria, one in Europe with 74 participants and one in the United States with 94. In the United States trial, median pain-free time was 69.4 hours against 40.8 hours for placebo. The EMA approved it in December 2014 and the FDA approved it on 8 October 2019. A prescriber places a 16 mg subcutaneous implant every 60 days. This is the highest evidence tier on the whole site.
Melanotan II is not a medicine. It is a cyclic non-selective melanocortin agonist with no approval anywhere. Sellers distribute it illicitly as a powder. Its human record comes from case reports and poison-center data, not trials. One indexed case shows the risk. A 39-year-old man injected six times the reported starting dose. His heart rate reached 146 beats per minute within 2 hours. He developed rhabdomyolysis, with a creatine phosphokinase of 17,773 IU/L. He spent 3 days in intensive care with acute kidney injury.
One shared note on moles. Both compounds affect pigmentation, and both profiles list skin and nevus checks under monitoring.
Evidence spread · 2 profiles