I’m currently collaborating with a lab in the Netherlands to develop a new rapamycin test that uses finger-prick blood samples. For this to work and to comply with ISO15189 standards, we need to complete 25 tests with traditional venipuncture and 25 with finger-prick samples.
I’m looking for volunteers in the Netherlands who are using rapamycin and are willing to have their blood drawn a few times for this project. Success here means we can start offering rapamycin finger-prick tests all over Europe, in addition to setting up regular blood draw services at “prikpunten” throughout the Netherlands.
If you’re in the Netherlands, use rapamycin, and are willing to contribute to this effort, please get in touch. The more volunteers we have, the less each person will need to undergo blood draws.
If we don’t manage to gather enough volunteers, I’m prepared to take on all 25 venipunctures and finger pricks myself. However, it would be immensely helpful and much appreciated if a few individuals could step forward. This would significantly reduce the number of times I need to undergo blood draws, making the process more manageable and less taxing on a single person.
Please reply on this thread if you’re interested or DM me.
Sure, if the demand is high enough and there is no proper alternative in the US. But trying to get Europe working first as there is no way to even get it tested currently.
If you live close to the border and want to go to a prikpunt in the Netherlands, sure, if not, it’s too much of an ask for you to drive multiple times.
I am absolutely not familair with the market, if you have some insights let me know, according to this post by RapAdmin: How to get a Rapamycin (sirolimus) Blood Level Test there is multiple providers, but I don’t think any of them are using finger pricks, is it worth it?
If the cost of them can be made low if a person buys a lot of them then yes I think so
many of us would like to map out our response curve, by checking the levels at several times points the first day and then learn what our personal curve looks like life the coming days perhaps up to a full week or two weeks
Above is a pain to do via blood venipuncture draws. But if one could do it oneself from home it would be a totally different thing.
Longevity doctors would probably love to be able to offer such a measurement as part of their programs.
since rapa interest is growing I think the demand for such testing will go up even more over near term
@Rapasailor@Agetron might hsve perspective on which/how many datapoints would be most interesting for people to collect if you could provide color on what it might cost for 3, 5,10, 15 tests or something like that
So here is my take… because rapamycin is prescribed and covered by my insurance… so are my labcorp tests for sirolimus (aka rapamycin).
Cost is about $95 per blood draw… lavender capped collection tube. I wait a full week and a few days to get my trough (typically under 1 ng/mL - .07 or .03) take my dose 2mg with 5 fluid ounces of GFJ and test after 2 hours. I usually get a 6x’s increase so 12 to 13 ng/mL.
I do this every four months. Next test will be in April. I don’t see a need for multiple test as I am aware of my low and peak.
My last test in January 2024. I used 4mg with GFJ. I wasn’t dure Zydus packed the same punch as rapamune which I was using.
being able to do new tests from home whenever you might want to tweak the protocol - or if you were new to rapa and needed to gather all the data you have done so far, would it not have be nice if you could have done it from home?
not having to wait for the results, but basically be able to see results directly, especially for the throughs, and hence be able to calibrate better if the window between doses is too long or too short
with multiple tests during the first hours and first 24 hours gain a better understating of how high your peak actually is / vs hoping the one blood test is done at the right time, is with a given dose and grapefruit amount (or other multiplier)
being able to get a sense of the area under the curve (AUC) of exposure to a given Rapa protocol
Perhaps the home testing could come with an app that can help visualize and also start collecting the data accruals users and giving averages back for different dose/window length/gender/weight profile.
It would take us in the direction of the difference of having just a single fasting glucose measurement not being that helpful vs the value of getting OGTT, CGM/home finger prick and Hb1Ac data combined
