Rapamycin treatment during early development extends lifespan and healthspan

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#1

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Two new studies on rapamycin shows how short-term treatment with rapamycin very early in life may provide lifespan and healthspan benefits, but it also seems there is a cost in terms of growth (so this dosing strategy seems unlikely to be something that humans will implement).

…we subjected genetically diverse UMHET3 mice to the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin for the first 45 days of life and followed them up until death.

Treated mice grew slower, with most of the deceleration occurring in the first week, and remained smaller for their entire lives. Their reproductive age was delayed but without affecting offspring numbers.

Rapamycin initially reduced DNA methylation age of livers, however, that effect was lost with aging.

Overall, the results demonstrate that short-term rapamycin treatment during early life is a novel longevity intervention that establishes causality between pace of development and longevity in evolutionary distant organisms.

Lifespan can be extended during a specific time window early in life

Here, we found that a short rapamycin treatment during early life can prolong lifespan in Mus musculus and Drosophila melanogaster. Notably, the same treatment at later time points has no evident effect on lifespan, suggesting that we found a crucial time-window involved in lifespan modulation

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New from bioRxiv: Full geroprotection from brief rapamycin treatment by persistently increased intestinal autophagy
#2

What is the age equivalent to humans in this study? Also interesting that the same treatment at later time points have no effect on lifespan. I wonder what the impact of growing slower would have in terms of cognition for humans

#3

This was short-term treatment very early in life for mice and fruit flies. Short-term treatment later in life had no effect.

#4

Is this due to epigenetic effects?

I mildly CR’d myself around puberty (+became veg) and Is suspect this had small effects on my eventual growth (it’s like people who CR’d themselves enough that they didn’t grow up to the genetic potential of their true height) and am SUPER-glad I did it (and wish I did it more). I don’t give a fuck about reproduction

Adderall/Ritalin can do the same thing too

#5

That’s interesting
It looks like the treatment is even before the reproductive age, and the main consequence is smaller body size

I wonder if combining Growth hormone + Rapamycin will counteracts the side effects of Rapamycin?

#6