Unregulated peptide melanotan-II seen to increase risk of abnormal moles | ABC NEWS

Added: 2026-06-06

[00:00:00]Dermatologists are sounding the alarm over potential skin cancer risks associated with unsafe and unregulated peptides and part of a social media driven beauty craze. Australian skin specialists say they're increasingly seeing adverse impacts as a result of patients injecting a peptide that stimulates tanning. With more, here's our national health equity reporter Rachel Carbonell.

[00:00:25]Hi there, Rachel. So, tell us about this peptide that people have been using.

[00:00:30]>> Hi Roz. Look, it's one of a number of unregulated peptides that are not safe or approved for human use. You can inject this one, Melanotan II, or take it as a nasal spray.

[00:00:42]It's part of a sort of a health and beauty craze that's having a bit of a resurgence online, particularly on social media at the moment. And essentially this is a product that skin specialists say tricks your skin cells into producing more pigment and therefore increasing and accelerating the kind of darkening of the skin.

[00:01:05]And they're really concerned about the health risks associated with using this unregulated peptide.

[00:01:11]>> And we've been hearing a lot about this social media trend of people taking unregulated peptides. Is this drug part of that trend?

[00:01:20]>> It is and it's one of the doctors that I spoke to, one of the dermatologists said that they think that maybe this resurgence in popularity of Melanotan II, which has been around for about 10 years and has had warnings associated it with it, is because people are taking peptides in what are called stacks. So, they might be on a number of unregulated peptides on some kind of protocol recommended to them by an influencer with a with the hope of sort of stacking the supposed benefits of these peptides.

[00:01:51]>> And what are skin specialists then saying about this peptide and what they're seeing?

[00:01:56]>> Well, firstly, because they're unregulated, they're coming from black market labs. So, you don't really know what else might be in it. You don't know if the substance itself, which has risks, is is pure. It could have any kind of contaminant in it, such as heavy metals, which is something that people in the harm minimization space that have been testing steroids say commonly happens, and they think these peptides are coming from similar labs. But, in relation to Melanotan II itself, what the dermatologists are saying is that they are seeing an increase in patients coming into their clinics that are using it. And the thing that concerns them the most is people coming in with more atypical or unusual-looking moles, and that these moles are a risk factor for melanoma. There is a limited amount of scientific data on the safety of Melanotan II, but there are some case reports in the scientific literature that do link Melanotan II directly to melanoma.

[00:02:52]>> So, what needs to be done to address these risks?

[00:02:55]>> Look, it's an unregulated substance, and so regulating it is very hard. I mean, the Therapeutic Goods Administration tries to crack down on people advertising it, and Border Force tries to pick it up at the border. But, some of the doctors have said that we need to get creative in terms of tackling the misinformation about these products online, more doctors on social media, and perhaps even trying to recruit influencers to try and combat some of that misinformation, so that the the real information about these products lands in the space where people are getting their information from.

[00:03:29]>> Thank you, Rachel.

[00:03:31]>> Thanks, Roz.