# Melanotan 2 Dosage in the Research: Doses, Routes & Half-Life > Melanotan 2 dosage as documented in the literature: the doses, routes, and half-life studied in Phase I pilots and rodent work. Research context only, not a dosing recommendation. The doses, routes, and pharmacokinetics recorded in the research — described strictly as study facts, never as a protocol for people. ## Read this first This page reports what doses of Melanotan 2 were given in published studies, and by what route. It is not a guide, a protocol, or a recommendation, and it deliberately gives no instructions for use in people. Melanotan 2 is not approved for human use anywhere, the products sold online are unregulated and often mislabeled, and self-administration carries the serious risks described on the effects page. The short summary: the small human studies used very low doses given by injection under the skin, calculated per kilogram of body weight. Rodent studies used a wider range, sometimes injected directly into the brain to study appetite. No human dosing schedule has ever been validated, and there is no published, confirmed human half-life for the compound. Every number below is a study-design fact attached to a specific experiment, written so you can understand the research — not so anyone can copy it. ## Doses recorded in the human studies Human dose figures come from two small Phase I programs. In the pigmentation pilot, three healthy men received subcutaneous Melanotan 2 escalated from 0.01 to 0.025-0.03 mg/kg, dosed every other weekday for two weeks; 0.025 mg/kg/day was the dose suggested for any later Phase I work, and 0.03 mg/kg produced dose-limiting drowsiness [1]. In the erectile-function studies, a single subcutaneous research dose of 0.025 mg/kg was used [3]. These are weight-based research doses — milligrams per kilogram of body weight — measured under medical supervision in a study setting, not the fixed "units" discussed in online forums. They are recorded here only to describe what the trials did. Reported nausea was dose-related and was severe in roughly one in eight subjects at 0.025 mg/kg in controlled work, which is part of why the studies stayed at low doses. ## Routes studied, and why injections dominate The phrase melanotan 2 injections reflects the research reality: subcutaneous injection is the primary route in both the human studies and in self-administration, because the peptide is poorly absorbed by mouth — oral bioavailability was only about 4.6% in the rat, making oral dosing impractical [7]. Routes documented across the literature include: - **Subcutaneous injection** — the main research and self-administration route. - **Intravenous** — used in rodent pharmacokinetic and behavioral studies. - **Intracerebral / intracerebroventricular microinjection** — used in rodent appetite and energy research to deliver the peptide directly to brain regions [4]. - **Intranasal spray** — documented in self-administration case reports; unlicensed and not a validated route. - **Oral** — characterized but impractical given the low bioavailability [7]. For stability, the literature describes Melanotan 2 as a lyophilized (freeze-dried) powder kept cold and dry, with reconstituted solutions refrigerated per general peptide-laboratory practice; its lactam-bridged ring confers more enzymatic resistance than linear alpha-MSH [7]. None of this should be read as preparation guidance. ## Melanotan 2 half-life and how much to inject On the question of melanotan 2 half life: no validated human pharmacokinetic half-life has ever been published for Melanotan 2 itself. A rat intravenous study showed rapid, biphasic, multi-compartment plasma clearance [7]. The closest human reference point is the linear analog Melanotan I, which after subcutaneous dosing showed an absorption half-life of roughly 0.07-0.79 hours and a beta-phase half-life of roughly 0.8-1.7 hours, with oral dosing producing no detectable levels [10]. In both compounds, the visible pigmentation persists for weeks after the peptide has cleared, because melanin synthesis continues downstream. As for how much melanotan 2 to inject — this site does not answer that, because there is no safe, validated human dose to give. The only human figures that exist are the supervised research doses above, recorded for study purposes. Given the unregulated, often-mislabeled products on the market and the documented serious harms, dosing decisions are firmly a matter for a qualified clinician, not a research-digest website. --- Field notes on the pigmentation literature — observations recorded, not a tan prescribed.