Dr. Matt Kaeberlein, Dr. Jon An and their teams at the University of Washington have partnered with Dr. Alan Green and other colaborators (including us) and have today launched a new study on rapamycin and its effects on healthy people. The study is being funded by an Impetus Grants.
We encourage everyone who visits here (from anywhere in the world) to participate - whether you are currently taking rapamycin or not (they also need a control group - so if you have any interest in healthy lifespans, please join the study).
Also, please tell your doctor (that prescribed you rapamycin) about the study and encourage him/her to contact the study and get their other Rapamycin-using patients (who may not be aware of the study) to get involved. The larger the number of people in the study, the better the data will be, and the better we can all understand the effects of rapamycin in healthy people.
From Matt Kaeberlein:
We will hold special online Q&A sessions for study participants where I and my colleagues will be available to answer questions and discuss the science around rapamycin and the biology of aging more broadly
The study is survey based and consists of short modules that will each take only a few minutes. It does not have to be completed all at once. Collectively, the information will provide us with a better understanding of the effects of rapamycin, particularly its potential effects on the aging process. We are also collecting data from people who do not take rapamycin, so as to have a control group for comparison. Your data will be kept confidential with compliance to HIPAA regulations and we will let you know what our findings are.
Please go to the study website (https://rapamycinstudy.org/) where you will be asked to complete an informed consent. Once this has been done, you will be provided with a unique identifier within 24 hours and directed to the survey.
If you have any questions about the survey or have any difficulties with it, please send an email to rapamycinstudy@uw.edu
Summary of why you should join in the study:
It helps move the rapamycin science forward faster
You get direct access to some of the top Rapamycin reseachers (Matt Kaeberlein et al) via study participant Q&As.
Even non-users of rapamycin are needed for the control group.
Its Quick and Easy - All you have to do are complete some Health/Online Surveys
All done with mine, too. Not sure how useful I’ll be to them since I only started less than 6 months ago and just finished a 6 week break, but I’m excited that he plans to do one or more live Q & A sessions for participants.
There have been two concurrently funded studies by Impetus Grants that are focused on rapamycin use by healthy people like us. One is the survey-oriented one that Matt Kaeberlein is doing, and another one with blood draws off a subset of the patients being done by Dudley Lamming and his group. They are working together on this so together these two studies should provide some valuable insights!
I suspect it’s mainly meant to generate hypotheses for future studies. We could always criticize a study like this for what it doesn’t include, but hopefully something is better than nothing. One advantage is that it’s incredibly inexpensive to do internet survey research on enthusiastic, uncompensated participants.
I thought some of the questions were interesting as they hinted at some underlying hypothesise’. For example, I’m interested in understanding how Rapamycin could benefit oral hygiene or eyesight. And why one might expect ‘greater frequency of morning erections’
I’m not sure so much if they are hinting at underlying hypotheses so much as trying to get confirmation or counter evidence to things that they’ve heard anecdotally from people, or from animal studies (to see if they hold true in people) - like the eyesight or oral / bone benefits they’ve seen in the mouse studies.
Since these are speculative questions, I’ll speculate that these benefits result from higher autophagy levels with rapamycin. This might lead to improved vascular functions, which might be relevant to eyesight and erections. Changes in the gut microbiome from rapa might also improve oral health.
Guys - sorry I missed the conference call, just been traveling all week and too busy this time. It seems like AgingDoc provides some of the data - is this correct?
I believe they are going to email the video of the recording.
Dr Green was not a proponent of grapefruit juice. Said you want a high peak and then for it to be metabolised quickly.
Rapamune is superior to generics with respect to bio availability… Could actually be false economy to buy generics (my inference).
I don’t think they fully addressed the question of bioavailability when taken with/without fat?
Case study of one already very fit Dr Green patient seeing further aerobic improvement following rapamycin. He said cyclists are the population of people who KNOW when they see changes because ‘we’ monitor power output so closely!
As usual very underwhelmed view on other drugs/ supplements for life extension (even Acarbose). Dr Green speculating that Acarbose may just rescue a bad diet…
Dr Green has moved away from biweekly dosing
MK now on 6mg/wk not 8
Dr Green cautions about going above 10mg/wk and stressed the likely U shaped dosing curve. I may now drop mine back down to 8…
There didn’t seemed to be a consensus on wash out periods?
Some discussion (that I partly missed) around topical use of rapamycin on the skin
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