Peptides of pineal gland and thymus prolong human life

Khavinson VKh, Morozov VG · Neuroendocrinology Letters

Mortality over six years in the St Petersburg arms was 81.8% of 22 controls against 41.7% on Thymalin, 45.8% on Epithalamin and 33.3% on the two together, 24 patients in each, with a separate group of 20 dosed annually for six years at 20.0%. The fold differences the paper quotes — 2.0–2.1 for Thymalin, 1.6–1.8 for Epithalamin, 2.5 for the combination and 4.1 for the annually dosed group — are ratios of those crude percentages. In the Kiev cohort followed eight years, mortality was 13.6% of controls against 6.6% on Thymalin and 8.5% on Epithalamin. The joint endpoint is the number of times a patient went to a doctor for deforming osteoarthrosis needing extra medication, counted over four months before and four months after treatment: 2.17 to 2.08 in controls, 2.17 to 1.50 on Thymalin, 1.85 to 1.31 on Epithalamin and 1.92 to 1.31 on the combination, each treated arm at P<0.05 against both its own baseline and the control.

Population

Elderly and older people followed for 6–8 years in St Petersburg and Kiev

Intervention

Thymalin (thymic) and Epithalamin (pineal) peptide preparations given during the first 2–3 years of observation — in St Petersburg 10 mg intramuscularly daily for 10 days, 100 mg a course, repeated after a year; in Kiev 10 mg five times at 2–3 day intervals, 50 mg a course, six courses over three years

Comparator

Placebo injections, with patients allocated by stratification randomisation; the report states the trial was double blind

Limitations

The joint result is a count of doctor visits in patients who already had the disease over a four-month window, so it is neither incidence nor a measure of the joint, and the Epithalamin arm began that window at 1.85 visits where the control began at 2.17. The design is better described than the indexing suggests — stratification randomisation, placebo, double blind — but no allocation concealment is described, there are no confidence intervals, and every effect is a ratio of crude percentages with no adjustment. The mortality comparison rests on 114 patients in five groups of 20 to 24, not the 266 the paper leads with, and the 4.1-fold group was a separate group of 20 outside that randomisation and the youngest at baseline, 79.4 years against 80.2 to 82.1. Epithalamin alone, the pineal preparation the tetrapeptide derives from, was the weakest arm on mortality. Both authors are from the originating institute. The treatment was the parent extracts, so it tested neither the tetrapeptide sold as Epithalon nor Sigumir nor Cartalax.