Wow, that’s a lot of 85+ dudes and that is good to know. I hear you about rapa and I did mention you as being a very good N=1 now let’s try and find few more N=1’s hopefully over 95 that are taking Rapa LOL. Not against Rapa whatsoever, just mentioning that I’ve had every now and then the known side effects. Will see as we go along.
To be honest, I haven’t seen any comments from the usual critics who often pick apart papers. I know the unspoken rules of the forum go without saying, but I still feel the need to say a few words.
On subjective benefits:
In a non‑blinded survey, when subjects actively seek out, purchase, and take a widely hyped “anti‑aging miracle drug” in pursuit of longevity, a strong placebo effect and confirmation bias are inevitable. Under the current study design, these purely subjective measures have virtually zero objective medical value.
On the COVID‑19 data:
Infection rates were essentially the same between the two groups. As for disease severity, the “continuous treatment” group, which the authors highlight as having the best outcomes, consisted of only 37 people. If you look closely at their statistical methods, that neat p < 0.005 in the 37‑person group came from lumping together “moderate,” “severe,” and “long COVID” cases and comparing them against the non‑treatment group. Break it down: severe (0 vs 2) or long COVID (0 vs 3) – the sample sizes are so small that no statistical significance can be calculated at all.
If this comparison were meaningful, the fact that the continuous‑use group had a significantly higher proportion of mild infections (86.5% vs non‑users, p < 0.005) would imply that taking rapamycin increases the likelihood of mild COVID‑19. But that’s absurd.
Bottom line:
The study design has fatal flaws; it cannot yield any valid conclusions. And let’s be blunt – people who go out of their way to get a rapamycin prescription from Alan Green at a New York clinic are inevitably more aggressive in their anti‑aging and medical approaches. Confounding factors are nearly impossible to control.
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All true, but sometimes you have to get data (however imperfect) from any source available… and its helped get other groups interested in doing real clinical trials of rapamycin, so it helped kick-off the movement.
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People with severe COVID infections simply cannot take the drug continuously. So, apart from the continuous-use subgroup where some data showed statistically significant differences, comparisons between all other groups did not reach statistical significance. This paper essentially says nothing. Of course, if it serves as a catalyst for many subsequent rapamycin trials, then maybe that’s its only value. But people’s attitudes toward different trials are strikingly different: they staunchly defend a positive study, even a survey with serious design flaws, yet they are clearly resistant to that negative RCT I just mentioned. Well, I really do feel this unspoken rule deeply. But maybe it’s because I’m still young; perhaps after being beaten down by society a few more times, I’ll get used to it.