Dr. Suh said early results suggested it was realistic to hope the drug could decrease ovary ageing by 20% without women experiencing any of the 44 side-effects rapamycin can have, which range from mild nausea and headaches to high blood pressure and infections.
In fact, Suh said, participants in the randomised, placebo-controlled study had self-reported improvements in their health, memory, energy levels and in the quality of their skin and hair: health improvements consistent with other studies into rapamycin that have suggested the medication can increase lifespan by 9-14% while revitalising the immune system and organs that deteriorate in old age.
“The results of this study – the first in human history – are very, very exciting. It means that those with age-related fertility problems now have hope when before, they didn’t,” said Suh.
Ovaries release eggs continuously: women lose about 50 every month, with just one reaching ovulation. A small, weekly dose of rapamycin slows ovaries down, so they release only 15 eggs a month. Suh and Williams estimate this decreases the organs’ ageing by 20%.
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Interesting yes but my prediction would be that late pregnancies in these women would have an extremely high rate of chromosomal abnormalities secondary to nondisjunction. This would result in a high miscarriage rate and frequent trisomy 21, 18, and 13. I can’t see how rapamycin would fix that? I guess it could be that simulating autophagy might help reduce nondisjunction as well. I always thought that menopause occurs secondary to running out of eggs but perhaps it is secondary to running out of good eggs and minimizing nondisjunction is part of the story.
Certainly possible but that approach requires artificial insemination. Eggs are fertilized in a petri dish, embryos are screened by removing a cell and sequencing, and then some are selected for implantation. This of course involves a couple more bars for a successful pregnancy in an otherwise marginal situation. One could of course screen pregnancies and abort those with aneuploid genomes. I guess I was just pointing out that although this bodes well for Rapa it might not be the panacea that it initially appears to be.
Yes - it must have been the early (lower dose) ITP trials they are talking about… I don’t know why they quote the earlier ones and not the higher 23% to 26% seen in later ITP trials.
We don’t split out male and female dosing, but yes, I suspect thats probably about average (or perhaps a little higher) for the females here taking rapamycin. If you looked at our poll, he’s probably right (a significant percentage are higher than the 5mg per week), but those are mostly probably heavier males… What is the Rapamycin Dose / Dosage for Anti-Aging or Longevity?
Good point on weight. We need the full paper to have the average weight of participants but being American 40yo females we can expect about 77 kg (vs 90 kg for the average man the same age). So 0.065 mg/kg, which gives 6mg/week for a 90 kg person.
Anyway, great news that will hopefully bring more women here!
Perhaps I’m wrong. I thought most people were taking 8mg. Given its long half life that means you’re constantly topping up every week and will reach saturation without cycling. I take only 4mg myself. Means one day a week I’m completely clear of rapa by my calcs.
The highest frequency dosing is 6mg/week per our survey, but we didn’t ask the sex of the responder, nor the weight, so we really don’t have enough information to draw any conclusions…
Right so 73% are taking 6mg or more. That’s quite in line with my impression from speaking with people directly. I would assume that a large majority of people both in here and on that survey are men from what we know about online forum participation in general. Guesstimating here but I think most are not flushed of their previous weekly dose by the time they take their next one. So risk of mTOR suppression becoming constant rather than intermittent.
What about the paper published on rapa use? (forgot its name…) I think the average dose was 6 mg/week there, and the overall distribution was lower than in this forum’s survey.
And indeed, weight matters a lot.
[EDIT: More than the dose, I found that the most impressive was the short duration of the study: after only 3 months of rapa use they saw these massive benefits!]
How did they come with number of 5 years of prolonged fertility? If they say Rapamycin could decrees ovary ageing by 20% and average menopause age is 51 and average year of starting a period is 12, than this is span of 39 yeas of periods and 20% is 7,8 years.
Also, study lasted for 3 months, how they come to conclusion that it will prolong periods for approx. 5 years? The hypothesis that Rapamycin slows down ovarian ageing by suppressing numbers of released eggs from 50 to 15 per months is based on premises that there is a final number of eggs in woman ovaries and there are new researches which suggest there are ovarian stem cells in ovaries which can produce new eggs. There are woman who wrote on this forum about taking Rapamycin after menopause and getting they periods again which would not be possible if there was a final number of eggs in ovaries. Also, Rapamycin regenerates organs which can be maybe the case in ovaries too, so delaying menopause cold be also from this aspect, not only form “preserving” numbers of eggs in ovaries.by suppressing mTOR.
73 women (average weight 62 kg), 260 men (average weight 81 kg). Too bad the graph is in # and not %, and they should have given the doses per kg of weight as well, but anyway, both the median and the average for men and women seem to be around 5 mg/week, which is exactly what was used in this fertility study.
Without disagreeing with this point, I would think the problem of a reduction in mitochondrial quality is also likely to be an issue. The reason paternal age is not as important to fertility as maternal age is that the paternal mitochondria are either destroyed or irrelevant in the quantity in the zygote.
I find it interesting that the human egg cells are created in the mother well before the mother herself is born:
I see that as a solution to the problem of gradually deteriorating mitochondria (which I personally see as a primary store of biological age). Hence for babies to be born young they need to come from egg cells which were created when the mother was an embryo and kept in a relatively quiescent state since then.
Females in the study were ( at least according to cited source) only up to 35 years old , so probably younger than several of us here…
I also understand none of them would have had side effects of headaches etc …I just had my 5 mg dose yesterday ( taken at 11.55 am ) and was totally out as of 16 pm until mid this morning due to atrocious headache (it felt like I was suddenly hit hard by the flu but luckily it mostly passed by now) Not sure this was since I paused it for 3 weeks ( had some 5 mg doses before with mostly just huge fatigue and a rash once in a while) but not sure if I will up my dose further . I guess it is ok to take ibuprofen or paracetamol against the headache? ( I did take some as I could barely move from the pain yesterday)
(it felt like I was suddenly hit hard by the flu but luckily it mostly passed by now) Not sure this was since I paused it for 3 weeks ( had some 5 mg doses before with mostly just huge fatigue and a rash once in a while) but not sure if I will up my dose further . I guess it is ok to take ibuprofen or paracetamol against the headache? ( I did take some as I could barely move from the pain yesterday)