Why Are Women Getting Placenta Injections?
The strange intersection of menopause, fatigue, skin and Japanese medicine
There is a particular kind of aesthetic clinic in Japan where the treatment menu can look slightly surreal if you're used to Western medicine.
Laser treatments sit alongside injectables. Skin treatments sit alongside medical consultations. And somewhere in the middle of it all, there may be an option that simply says:
placenta.
Not a cream containing a tiny amount of placental extract.
An injection.
For decades, human placental preparations have been used as pharmaceutical medicines in Japan, particularly in the treatment of conditions associated with menopause and liver disease.
Melsmon has been used in Japan for around 70 years for menopausal symptoms, while Laennec developed a different medical identity around liver function.
And somewhere along the way, placenta became associated with something much broader: feeling better, recovering faster, looking better, perhaps even feeling a little more like yourself.
That is where the story gets interesting.
Menopause is more than hot flashes
Menopause is often reduced to a list of familiar symptoms: hot flashes, night sweats and irregular periods.
But the experience can be considerably broader.
Sleep can change. Mood can change. Energy can change. Joint and muscle symptoms can appear. Concentration can feel different. Some women experience palpitations, headaches, anxiety or changes in sexual function.
The Japanese Kupperman Menopausal Index, which appears in several placental-extract studies, measures a range of these symptoms rather than focusing on hot flashes alone.
And this is one reason the placenta research is interesting.
The studies aren't simply asking:
Does this make women look younger?
Some are asking whether it changes how women actually feel.
Melsmon has a long history in women's health
Melsmon was developed as a treatment for menopausal disorders and insufficient milk secretion, rather than as a cosmetic injectable.
The Japanese prescribing information lists menopausal disorders and insufficient milk secretion as its indications.
Read the Melsmon medical information
An early clinical paper published in 1981 described Melsmon as a 2 mL injection containing 100 mg of placental extract and reported its use in women with menopausal symptoms.
The study compared Melsmon with placebo and reported a substantially greater proportion of women classified as having a “useful” or “very useful” response in the Melsmon group.
Read the original 1981 Melsmon menopause study
It is old research, and it should be read that way.
But it establishes something important.
Placenta injections did not arrive in aesthetics first.
They were already being investigated as a medical treatment for women's health.
Then came better-controlled studies
One of the more interesting human studies was published in 2009.
Researchers conducted a prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial involving 108 women with menopausal symptoms.
The women received human placental extract or placebo for four weeks, with symptoms assessed using the Kupperman Index.
Both groups improved.
But the reduction in the Kupperman score was significantly greater in the placental-extract group than in the placebo group.
The mean reduction was 12.30 points in the treatment group compared with 7.15 points in the placebo group.
Read the 2009 randomized controlled trial
That is the kind of study I find much more useful than a collection of testimonials.
It doesn't prove that placenta is a superior treatment for menopause.
But it does give us a controlled human signal worth investigating.
And then there is Melsmon versus Melsmon-like treatments
A 2023 randomized, multicenter, double-blind study compared Melsmon with another human placental extract, Unicenta, in women with menopausal symptoms.
The women received 2 mL injections three times a week for a total of six injections over 12 days.
Both groups showed significant improvements in Kupperman menopausal scores, and the investigators concluded that Unicenta was non-inferior to Melsmon.
Read the 2023 Melsmon comparison study
This is interesting for another reason.
It suggests that the question isn't necessarily:
Which placenta is magical?
There may be several placental preparations capable of producing overlapping biological effects.
But because their compositions and manufacturing methods differ, we still don't know how much of that effect comes from shared components and how much comes from differences between products.
What about hot flashes?
This is one area where the newer evidence gets particularly interesting.
A 2025 systematic review looked specifically at randomized controlled trials of placental extracts for menopausal symptoms.
The review identified 11 eligible studies involving women treated with human or porcine placental extracts.
Across the studies, researchers reported improvements in several measures of menopausal symptoms, including menopausal severity scores and some vasomotor symptoms.
One of the included studies compared Melsmon with Unicenta and found statistically significant improvements in the frequency and scores of daytime and nighttime hot flashes in both groups.
Read the 2025 systematic review
But the review also makes the limitations clear.
The studies used different products, different doses and different treatment schedules, and the overall evidence base remains relatively small compared with established menopause treatments.
So this isn't:
Placenta has been proven to treat menopause.
It is:
There is a growing human evidence base suggesting that placental extracts may influence some menopausal symptoms, but the evidence is still heterogeneous.
That distinction matters.
What about sleep?
This is where things get especially interesting to me.
Sleep problems are part of the symptom picture measured in Japanese menopause scales, and some clinical studies have reported improvements in sleep-related symptoms alongside broader menopausal improvements.
One small randomized study involving Melsmon followed 40 women with perimenopausal symptoms for four months. The researchers reported improvements in the modified Kupperman Index, time required to fall asleep, nighttime awakenings and sleep duration.
The study also reported improvements in psycho-emotional symptoms and skin condition in the Melsmon group.
But there is an important caveat.
There were only 40 women, and the study had a relatively small sample and limited follow-up.
It is interesting evidence.
It isn't definitive evidence.
And then there is fatigue
This is where placenta takes an unexpected turn.
Human placental extract has also been investigated for fatigue, including a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of subcutaneous injection in people with chronic fatigue syndrome.
In that study, participants received placental extract or saline for six weeks, with 4 mL injected three times a week.
The researchers reported an improvement in fatigue severity compared with placebo.
Read the chronic fatigue study
Again, this isn't evidence that a healthy person who feels tired should receive placenta injections.
But it does show that researchers have investigated placental extract as something potentially affecting whole-body symptoms, rather than treating it purely as a cosmetic product.
That distinction is important.
There is a new clue from 2026
There is also a rather intriguing new piece of research that gives us another possible part of the puzzle.
A 2026 study investigated Melsmon in a stress-sensitive mouse model and found that the placental extract reduced several markers of stress-induced inflammation, both in the brain and in peripheral tissues. The researchers also observed effects on the stress-response system, including changes associated with HPA-axis activity.
It is interesting because it offers a possible biological connection between some of the things people describe after placenta treatment: stress, inflammation, fatigue and feeling generally unwell.
But this is very much a mechanistic animal study, not evidence that Melsmon treats depression, chronic stress or fatigue in humans. The researchers did not assess behavioural outcomes, and they specifically note that the active components responsible for the effects have not yet been identified.
Still, I think it is exactly the sort of study worth watching.
It doesn't tell us that placenta is a cure for anything. It was an animal study, and the researchers still don't know which components of Melsmon are responsible for the effects.
But it does give us a possible biological explanation for something that has always been difficult to explain: why a complex placental extract might have effects beyond the tissue where it is injected.
If Melsmon can influence inflammatory signalling and the body's stress-response system, that opens up a much more interesting question about what these extracts are actually doing systemically.
We don't have the answer yet.
But now there is another piece of the puzzle.
So why does the beauty industry love it?
The beauty industry didn't invent placenta injections.
It inherited them.
By the time placental extracts began appearing in aesthetic settings, they already had decades of medical history behind them, particularly in Japan.
What changed was the language around them.
Medical treatment became rejuvenation. Menopause treatment became women's wellness. Tissue repair became regeneration.
The biology didn't necessarily change.
The framing did.
The Japanese part is important
There is something culturally interesting about this history.
In Japan, placenta injections aren't simply an internet wellness trend. Products such as Melsmon and Laennec have existed as pharmaceutical medicines for decades, with formal indications, prescribing information and clinical histories.
That gives them a very different starting point from a supplement that suddenly becomes fashionable on social media.
But it also creates a strange situation when the products travel internationally.
A woman in Japan might encounter Melsmon primarily in the context of menopausal medicine.
Aesthetic clinics elsewhere may present the same category of product as a skin rejuvenation or anti-ageing treatment.
The product may be the same.
The conversation around it can be completely different.
Does placenta replace hormone therapy?
No.
And this is an important distinction.
There is human research suggesting placental extracts may improve some menopausal symptoms, but that doesn't make them equivalent to menopausal hormone therapy.
Hormone therapy has a much larger evidence base, clearly characterised active ingredients and established indications for specific menopausal symptoms.
Placental extracts are a different category.
They are complex biological preparations, and their mechanisms are still incompletely understood.
So I wouldn't think of Melsmon as “natural HRT”.
It isn't.
It is a different treatment with a much smaller evidence base.
Then what are women actually responding to?
This is the question I keep coming back to.
If a woman says, “I feel better after placenta injections,” that experience may be completely genuine. But what actually produced it?
It could be a specific peptide, a change in inflammatory signalling, an effect on oxidative stress, better sleep, fewer hot flashes, or some combination of several effects. There could also be a placebo component, or biological effects we haven't identified yet.
The current evidence doesn't allow us to separate these possibilities with much confidence.
And perhaps that is exactly why the subject remains so fascinating. We can observe that something may be happening, but understanding what is happening, and why, is a much harder question.
From beauty back to biology
The more I read about placenta injections, the less I think they belong neatly in the category of beauty treatments. Their history is much broader, sitting somewhere between women's health, regenerative medicine, pharmacology and aesthetics.
Melsmon has spent decades being used in the context of menopause, while Laennec developed around liver disease. Placental extracts have also been investigated for wound healing, fatigue, skin biology and other conditions. Only part of that story is about looking younger.
Perhaps that is the thing that gets lost when placenta becomes an Instagram injectable.
The original question wasn't simply:
How do I make my skin look better?
It was something much more interesting:
Can this strange biological extract change something about how the body functions?
We still don't have a complete answer, but there is enough human research to make the question worth asking.
And yes, I am still keeping my emotional support boxes.
I'm just slightly more scientifically curious about them now.
C·🌷
Research notes
Placental extract and menopause
Efficacy and Safety of Placental Extract on Menopausal Symptoms: A Systematic Review.
Read the systematic review
Melsmon and menopausal symptoms
Karasawa et al., 1981
Clinical treatment test of Melsmon on menopausal disorder.
Read the original study
Human placenta extract and menopause
Lee et al., 2009
Efficacy and safety of human placenta extract in alleviating climacteric symptoms: Prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.
Read the study
Melsmon versus Unicenta
Kim et al., 2023
A Randomized, Multicenter, Double-Blind, Parallel, Non-Inferiority Clinical Study to Compare the Efficacy and Safety of Unicenta and Melsmon for Menopausal Symptom Improvement.
Read the full study
Melsmon and perimenopausal symptoms
Kovalenko & Atalyan, 2016
The experience of using the placenta hydrolyzate in women with climacteric syndrome in perimenopausal period.
Read the study
Melsmon and stress-induced inflammation
2026
Effects of Melsmon on stress-induced neuroinflammation and peripheral inflammation.
Read the full study
Human placental extract and chronic fatigue syndrome
Human Placental Extract as a Subcutaneous Injection Is Effective in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Multi-Center, Double-Blind, Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Study.
Read the study
Melsmon
Melsmon Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.
Official medical information, indications, composition and clinical information.
Read the manufacturer information
Laennec
Japan Bio Products
Official product information, indication, composition and safety information.
Read the manufacturer information