Positive side effects of rapamacin in organ transplant patients?

Is there any studies on positive side effects of rapamycin intake in organ transplant patients?

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I have been curious about that too. Are there reports of transplant patients who did very well with the transplant and had very noticeable anti-aging effects from the large intake of rapamycin?

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Yes - this is an issue that would seem to be a natural one to investigate, as these people will have been taking rapamycin / sirolimus for many years, perhaps decades already.

We’ll have to ask Matt K., but I believe that it hasn’t been investigated, in part because there are so many confounding variables with organ transplant patients… these people typically have been on a cocktail of medications for many years, phasing in some drugs over time, and others out…

But - you would think that you’d be able to get some specific data that might be valid and helpful - for example looking at female transplant patients who have been on rapamycin for decades, and checking key measures of fertility. This seems like a study that VitaDAO would fund, if it has not been done yet.

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My Twitter Post:

Matt’s response:

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I don’t follow much in the way of transplant patients on twitter or anywhere else - but have seen this woman post quite a bit on Twitter, she’s a transplant patient, and follows Blagosklonny… she posts quite frequently on how rapamycin seems to be helping her. I believe she doses at the level of 1mg rapamycin every day:

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Very interesting! I have been digging pubmed today and this is what I found.

Transplant patients have a very high risk of skin cancer.

“Data suggest that rapamycin could have a protective effect against skin cancer.”

“Switching from calcineurin inhibitors to sirolimus had an antitumoral effect among kidney-transplant recipients with previous squamous-cell carcinoma.”

“…patients taking sirolimus after developing posttransplant cancer had a lower risk of developing subsequent skin cancer, with no increased risk for overall mortality.”

Here is a study on influenza vaccination on transplant patients.

“Following tri-valent influenza vaccination, a similar rise in antibody titer occurred in sirolimus and calcineurin inhibitor (CNI) treated patients, though sirolimus treated patients developed a ‘protective’ titer to more influenza antigens.”

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Here is another study

Maintenance immunosuppression with the TOR inhibitor drugs, sirolimus and everolimus, is associated with a significantly reduced risk of developing any posttransplant de novo malignancy and non-skin solid malignancy.

And this one

Sirolimus was associated with a reduction in the risk of malignancy and non-melanoma skin cancer in transplant recipients. The benefit was most pronounced in patients who converted from an established immunosuppressive regimen to sirolimus.

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Since I have been taking rapamycin my chronic actinic keratoses have dropped to zero. Actinic keratosis is a skin cancer precursor.

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Here is a nice one sentence summary of beneficial side effects of rapamycin in transplant patients:

“There are also beneficial side effects in transplant patients, including fewer skin cancers, non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas, viral infections, and reduced cardiac allograft vasculopathy.”

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It will be a difficult project bc most transplant patients are on 2, sometimes 3 immunosuppressants. If they are on Rapamune, they also usually take Tacrolimus and sometimes Prednisone. My nephrologist told me that nobody besides me at their place is taking only Rapamycin. It’s very rare. In my case, I had to sign a waiver long ago to modify my protocol to only Rapamycin. It’s not a standard or approved protocol. Therefore to find people for that kind of study will be challenging. I think it’s the reason it’s not done yet.

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