Immediate-release melatonin
Immediate-release melatonin is a tier 1 form of Melatonin, used in 1,614 on-market products .
1,614
on-market products
tier 1
quality tier
n/a
elemental fraction
Why this tier: Rapid absorption (Tmax ~0.9 h and half-life ~1 h for a 5 mg dose in one small crossover PK study; Thanawala 2024) makes this the best-evidenced form for reducing sleep-onset latency, the primary endpoint in most RCTs. Trial material is mostly synthetic (bioidentical to endogenous melatonin), though this was not independently verified.
Source: Ferracioli-Oda E et al. 2013, PLoS One 8(5):e63773, PMID 23691095; Thanawala S et al. 2024, Pharmaceutics 16(10):1248, PMID 39458580