The Two Human Claims in Pinealon's Main Review Lead to a Review and a Patent
Its inventors say the peptide was lifted out of a cattle brain cortex extract, not a pineal gland, and the only human study I found with a control arm and a dose sits inside a patent that lapsed in 2025.
What it is
Pinealon is Glu-Asp-Arg, three amino acids joined end to end, molecular weight 418.40, PubChem CID 10273502, registry number 175175-23-2.
Where the sequence came from is the finding. Khavinson's own group, in a review published 31 December 2020, says the tripeptide was isolated from Cortexin. (PMID 33396470) Kurkin and colleagues, in Biomedicines in 2025, describe Cortexin as neuropeptides from cattle cerebral cortex, 70 to 95 percent of it polypeptides weighing 1,000 to 10,000 daltons. At 418 daltons Pinealon sits below the whole of that range. One fragment out of a mixture.
The name points at the wrong gland. In the one experiment I found that put these peptides onto pineal tissue, an organ culture from three month old rats, Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly and Lys-Glu-Asp raised a marker of dividing cells, and Glu-Asp-Arg appears only among those reported to have moved nothing. (PMID 22803060) Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly is Epithalon.
The Russian retail capsule declares peptide complex AC-5: arginine, glutamic acid and aspartic acid. Three loose amino acids and a house code, no sequence, no microgram figure. I could not confirm from it that the capsule holds the assembled tripeptide, and none of the human papers below describes an injection. The one that does name a route used capsules.
What the trials found
PubMed returns 22 records for pinealon, Europe PMC 29. Six involve people, all six in Advances in Gerontology, a Russian journal, and all six in Russian. The United States government's registry returned nothing under pinealon, Glu-Asp-Arg or EDR peptide, and the European register nothing under pinealon.
Nazimko 2012 is the only paper I found that prints a human dose: locomotive brigade workers swallowing one 100 microgram capsule twice a day for two weeks, with biological age measures reported as improved. No number of workers, no comparison group. (PMID 22708445)
Meshchaninov 2015 gave Pinealon and Vesugen, another Khavinson tripeptide, to 32 people aged 41 to 83 with several chronic diseases. Route, dose and duration are absent, no control group described, Vesugen did better, and the headcount does not close: 32 people, then 18 men and 12 women, which is 30. (PMID 26390612)
Another surveyed 150 lorry drivers against 150 metal craftsmen by questionnaire, the peptides arriving in one closing sentence, and PubMed indexes it as a Clinical Trial, which is why it circulates as a 150 person peptide study. (PMID 23734521) It gives no dose, no route and no count of who took anything.
The rest is animals and cells. The best specified gave 400 micrograms per kilogram into the belly cavity of 5xFAD-M mice, bred for Alzheimer's type damage, once a day for two months, ten per group. Dendritic spine density, the contact points where one nerve cell receives another, rose 11 percent against saline injected mice of the same strain, at a p value of 0.039, which is only just inside the usual threshold. (PMID 34071923) A second tripeptide, KED, was run alongside it in the same four arm experiment. That paper now carries a correction: two microscope figures, one labelled male mice and one female, were the same picture. (PMID 39861198)
Where the two human claims lead
That 2020 review makes two claims about people, and I chased both. The first is 72 patients with the after effects of a head injury improving on oral Pinealon added to standard treatment. Its reference is Umnov, Linkova and Khavinson 2013, in Russian, which describes itself as a review. (PMID 24738258) I could not find the primary report in either index.
The second is a rise in the alpha index, a measure of brain wave activity. Its reference is not a paper. It is Israel patent 194346.
Its American and international twins are readable. Twenty five patients aged 31 to 60, split at random in two: the peptide group injected into the muscle once a day for ten days, the controls given saline the same way. That group was subdivided again into three by severity, and the patent never says how many ended up in any arm. The amounts: 1.0 microgram a day for mild consequences, 10.0 micrograms for intermediate, 5.0 milligrams for severe. Largest amount, sickest people.
The alpha index went from 35.7 to 47.9, against 42.4 on conventional medication and 52.9 in healthy subjects. The patent does not keep its own control arm straight. Its text says the second group got saline, and the table that produces 42.4 labels that row standard medications.
Then the success rates. Good clinical results in 59.4 percent, satisfactory in 31.9, none in 8.7. They sum to 100, so they are shares of one group, and out of 25 patients every share is a multiple of 4 percent. None of those three is. The smallest count producing all three at the precision printed is 69: 41, 22 and 6. Open US 2012/0309688 A1 on Google Patents and do the division yourself. It is recorded there as expired for unpaid fees on 6 October 2025.
How it compares
The architecture here is Epithalon's. The answer is not.
| Approved? | Human evidence I found | What it rests on | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pinealon | None found anywhere. A food supplement in Russia by its own label | Six Russian papers, none reporting a placebo arm in its abstract, plus 25 patients inside a patent | An epigenetic mechanism argued from cells and rodents |
| Epithalon | Not assessed in this entry | Not assessed in this entry, see that entry | A 266 person mortality trial belonging to Epithalamin, the bovine pineal extract |
| Cortexin | A registered medicine in Russia | Not assessed here | The parent extract, from cattle cerebral cortex |
The vendor pages I opened do not import Cortexin's record either: one says that as of April 2026 no completed randomised trial in humans exists for Pinealon, another that no human trial has set a dose.
The head to head splits. In 18 month old rats put through acute low oxygen and mild cooling, Cortexin had the more pronounced effect on free radicals and on caspase 3, the enzyme that runs programmed cell death. (PMID 28509493) Free radicals are what every vendor page I opened leads with, and the extract won it. On a water maze test the peptide beat the extract in young and old rats. (PMID 28976148) Neither abstract prints a dose or a duration.
The mechanism claimed is epigenetic, the peptide binding DNA to change which genes switch on. The only result I found from outside that Russian network is a physics experiment showing the molecule can partly slip into the major groove of DNA, the wider of the two spiral channels running along the strand, in a tube. (PMID 30762356)
Where the dose came from
Reporting what circulates, not recommending it. Of two protocol pages I opened, one gives 5 to 10 milligrams a day under the skin in 10 to 20 day courses, the other 10 to 20 milligrams a day swallowed. The second also lists 0.1 to 1.0 micrograms per kilogram, but its own table labels that row animal research.
Same route, no species mixed in: the published human amount is 200 micrograms a day swallowed, the vendor top end 20 milligrams a day swallowed. A hundredfold, by mouth.
The patent's own toxicology gives away what its authors thought a real amount was. They gave 72 male mice a single dose of up to 5 milligrams per kilogram into the muscle and called that more than 5,000 times the therapeutic dose, putting that dose at about 1 microgram per kilogram, roughly 80 micrograms for an 80 kilogram adult. The other published rodent amount I found is 10 micrograms per kilogram, into the belly cavity of pregnant rats daily for five days, alongside the 400 micrograms per kilogram given to the Alzheimer's model mice above. (PMID 22567179)
So the injectable convention matches one published human figure only, and it is the worst one: the arm reserved for the most severely injured in that ten day study, whose mildest counterparts got one microgram. I found no page tracing its milligram figure to any study, and one says outright that the number was shaped by the product format and community habit rather than by a dose response trial. Sell flour in one bag size and after a while people bake by the bag.
What could go wrong
The one human study I found that went looking for harm found two signals, both pointing the wrong way for something sold as an antioxidant: prooxidant activity on a light emission test, and a fall in the blood stem cell marker CD34 that the authors read as inhibited blood cell production. (PMID 26390612) For balance, the same abstract reports no effect on chromatin condensation, meaning how tightly the DNA was packed inside the cell nucleus, which those authors called safe at the genetic level. No route, dose or control group is described, and a second peptide was given alongside, so nothing there is attributable to Pinealon alone.
All the toxicology I found sits inside that patent: 72 male mice on a single dose into the muscle of 1 to 5 milligrams per kilogram, 65 male rats dosed the same way daily for 90 days at 1 microgram to 1 milligram per kilogram, 84 male guinea pigs on the same for six months. Unreviewed, written by the applicants into a document whose purpose is a monopoly. I could not find a published repeat dose, cancer or gene damage study for this peptide.
I found no human safety data at all for the injected route at the amounts sellers list. No human paper I found describes an injection, and the one that names a route used capsules.
What no one seems to know
Whether any of it gets in. I found no measurement of how much of it is absorbed, how long it lasts in the body, or what fraction of a dose ever reaches the blood, in any species. Khavinson's own 2022 review on how ultrashort peptides are carried into cells proposes transport routes and reports no such measurement. (PMID 35887081)
Whether it is an antioxidant or a prooxidant in a person. The cell literature says one, the one human paper I found that measured says the other.
My take
A peer reviewed review sent me to a patent for its most concrete human result. Patents are drafted to secure a monopoly and carry no reviewer, and this one lapsed for unpaid fees. Every finding above except the physics work comes from one St Petersburg institute, or carries Khavinson or an institute colleague as an author.
If you have bought Pinealon, I want to know what the label said the contents were, and whether it named the tripeptide sequence anywhere or just listed the three amino acids.
Frequently asked
Is Pinealon the same thing as Epithalon?
They are different molecules from the same Russian research programme. Epithalon is four amino acids, Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly, and is associated with a bovine pineal extract. Pinealon is three, Glu-Asp-Arg, and its inventors say it was isolated from Cortexin, a mixture extracted from the cerebral cortex of cattle. In the one rat pineal gland culture I found that tested both, the peptide reported to move the pineal markers was Epithalon and not Pinealon.
Has Pinealon been tested in a clinical trial?
Not in a registered one that I could find. The United States government registry returned nothing for pinealon, for Glu-Asp-Arg or for EDR peptide, and the European register nothing for pinealon. What exists is six papers involving people, all six published in Advances in Gerontology and all six in Russian, none of which reports randomisation, blinding or a placebo arm in its abstract, plus a 25 patient ten day study that I found only inside a patent that lapsed in October 2025.
Where do the Pinealon doses people quote come from?
Not from a trial, and this is reporting what circulates rather than a recommendation. The only human amount I found in a published paper is 200 micrograms a day swallowed, one 100 microgram capsule twice a day for two weeks in locomotive crew, with no participant count given. Protocol pages list 5 to 10 milligrams a day injected under the skin in 10 to 20 day courses, or 10 to 20 milligrams a day swallowed, and that swallowed top end is a hundred times the published figure on the same route. One of those pages states that no human trial has set a dose and that the number was shaped by the product format and community habit.
Is Pinealon safe?
The human safety record I found is one paragraph in one paper, and it reported two signals pointing the wrong way: prooxidant activity on a light emission test, the opposite of the antioxidant effect the compound is sold for, and a fall in a blood stem cell marker that the authors read as suppressed blood cell production. That study gave a second peptide alongside and described no control group, so nothing in it is attributable to Pinealon alone. The same abstract also reports that the peptides did not affect chromatin condensation, meaning how tightly the DNA was packed inside the cell nucleus, which those authors called safe at the genetic level. All the animal toxicology I found sits inside a patent, written by the applicants and never peer reviewed, and I found no human safety data at all for the injected route at the amounts sellers list.
Why is it called Pinealon if its inventors say it came from a brain cortex extract?
I have no explanation for the name, only the record. Khavinson's own group states the tripeptide was isolated from Cortexin, a polypeptide preparation taken from the cerebral cortex of cattle. The pineal gland is a different organ, and in the rat pineal gland culture I found, the peptides that raised the marker of dividing cells were Ala-Glu-Asp-Gly, which is Epithalon, and Lys-Glu-Asp, with a second marker those pineal cells make raised by Epithalon alone, while Glu-Asp-Arg appears only among the peptides that did not move a cell death marker.
This content is for educational and informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Peptides discussed are research compounds and may not be approved for human use. Nothing here should be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before starting any peptide, supplement, or protocol. Individual responses vary. Do not self-administer compounds without proper medical supervision.
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