Hi, I normally take 6mg weekly of Rapamycin. However, I recently fell and broke a couple of ribs (not fun), and I was wondering if it is a good or bad idea to keep taking rapa while I heal. It takes about 6 weeks to heal a rib fracture. Not sure if lowering mTOR is good or bad for the healing process. I’m concerned that taking rapa might slow down the healing process.
Thanks, AAA
I would feel that the same processes that result in muscle loss (sarcopenia) would be a problem for healing of fractures. Given that cyclic rapamycin seems to, if anything help sarcopenia … on that logic I’d think it not to be a huge risk.
However, this is all theoretic, and we have no trial.
I’d certainly not think daily dosing would be a good plan - again on theory of continuous mTORC1 inhibition, which would certainly be expected to slow healing/repair processes - at least theoretically.
I doubt anyone has hard data on that.
I wish you were right on your 6 week estimate on the rib fracture - my experience is 3 months is more typical.
Thanks. You make some good points. Given the lack of evidence it’s a bit of a guess. I might just skip a couple of weeks just to be on the safe side, and then resume the rapamycin. And you’re right: Rib fractures can take a good while to heal.
This is interesting. Gosh I wish I knew which mouse studies would translate to humans.
Pro rapa:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4577952/
Against rapa:
The researchers in the pro-rapa study noted that the difference in outcomes may be related to dosage differences–the negative rapa study seemed to be more like an immunosuppressive dose–whereas most of us in this forum are opting for immune modulation.
Thank you for posting these 2 studies–my horse accidentally stomped on my little toe, breaking it, and I was wondering about stopping rapa–I think I will continue a low dose 10 days apart, based on the more positive (and more recent study.