Exact claim · Version 1 · Reviewed
“The side effects are just nausea and flushing.”
A verdict on this wording and scope, not a universal grade for Melanotan II.
01 · Verdict
Not established
Nausea is the dominant effect in the trial record, severe in 12.9 per cent of subjects at the higher dose in the 2000 study. But the published case literature also contains rhabdomyolysis and renal impairment requiring intensive care, renal infarction affecting roughly half a kidney, and acute ischaemic priapism that failed drug and irrigation treatment and required surgical decompression, a time-critical emergency carrying permanent erectile-dysfunction risk. These are case reports: they prove occurrence, not frequency. The honest statement is that the frequency of serious harm is unknown because no surveillance system exists, not that serious harm is rare.
- Evidence basis
- Observational human evidence
- Scope
- The completeness of the adverse-effect picture. Case reports establish that these events happened after use with temporal association; they cannot establish incidence or causation.
- Category
- Safety
02 · Primary record
Check the attached evidence
Defines the evidence limit02Melanotan II injection resulting in systemic toxicity and rhabdomyolysisPubMed · Clinical Toxicology · Reference · 2012
Defines the evidence limit03Melanotan II: a possible cause of renal infarction — review of the literature and case reportPubMed Central · CEN Case Reports · Reference · 2020
Defines the evidence limit04Melanotan tanning injection: a rare cause of priapismPubMed · Sexual Medicine · Reference · 2021
Defines the evidence limit
- Editorial review
- Internal editorial review recorded
- Responsible editor
- Anthony Treviso · Founder and responsible editor
- Clinical-review boundary
- Not independently medically reviewed.