Ulcerative Colitis and Rapamycin?

#1

Has anyone taken Rapamycin while also having ulcerative colitis?

I have U.C. and would appreciate your experiences!

#2

Rapamycin is a mixed bag for ulcerative colitis (UC). It has potential to be beneficial and also to be harmful. On the negative, it’s well known that rapamycin can slow down cellular growth and therefore might slow down wound healing. This could lead to slower healing of bleeding ulcers, which would obviously be harmful. On the other hand, it can also strongly inhibit inflammation, which is often excessive in diseases such as UC. By doing so it might be helpful. Note there are cases of rapamycin being beneficial in Crohn’s disease and in ulcerative colitis.

Here is a case report showing that rapamycin was highly beneficial in a child with UC:

It has been found to be beneficial for UC in mice:

Here is a study showing benefits for Crohn’s disease in children:

With the above in mind, rapamycin may well be worth trying in patients with UC. They just have to be careful, in particular if they are bleeding a lot and might be adversely effected by the slowdown of wound healing.

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#3

Thanks for your thoughts!

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#4

I think rapamycin could worsen symptoms because it put stress to the body and mind.

Latest paper came out how stress could lead to flares in UC:
https://academic.oup.com/ibdjournal/article/30/3/336/7257107

#5

They are referring to mental stress such as that which causes activation of the sympathetic nervous system. Rapamycin does not cause such stress so I think it’s very unlikely that this is relevant here.

#6

I suffer IBS and it causes me mental stress. Rapamycin is an antibiotic and it disturbs gut - The gut–brain axis, a bidirectional neurohumoral communication system.

#7

I believe that rapamycin is much stronger in terms of being anti-fungal, than it is as an antibiotic.

While I think it may have some anti-biotic properties, its very weak in that area and has never really been used in that application to the best of my knowledge.

Rapamycin Exerts Antifungal Activity In Vitro and In Vivo a
https://journals.asm.org/doi/pdf/10.1128/ec.05284-11

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#8

Rapamycin does not generally disturb the gut. Most people don’t experience any symptoms in the gut, with the exception of some experiencing diarrhea for a day or two after dosing unusually high doses. I have never heard of anone reporting on experiencing increased mental stress from taking rapamycin, and regarding IBS, I have seen evidence of rapamycin being beneficial for some cases of IBS and colitis. So overall your hypothesis here is weak. That said, if you do have IBS, then you would be wise to be careful because not everyone responds in the same way.