I am taking rapamyacin to prevent blindness from macular degeneration. I am taking it from a US source and with a doctor’s prescription. I am taking 5mg weekly. I have had the condition for eight years now and my vision is poor when I am driving to see road signs. I am 74. My retina doctor didn’t respond when I told him. I don’t have a medical background. I just read a NiH study and I am really just grasping for some remedy to save my eyesight. It’s at the intermediate stage.
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@S_Sutherling
There is in fact some encouraging evidence that Rapamycin, NAC, NMN, and PQQ have potential in the treatment of AMD. It may be worth taking all four of the supplements, since each one elicits a different response. I have a moderate case that has remained stable for the last year, but neither I nor my retina specialist know exactly why.
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Tim Thank you. Very helpful. My concern is: There was a recent published article Feb 2024
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666756823002581
published in the Lancet Health Longevity Journal and reprinted in the publication sciencedirect. The article summed up the clinical literature and the upshot is that rapamyacin helps cardiovascular, immune systems and the skin but there is little evidence showing that it helps with AMD. There were only 2 AMD human clinical studies cited and in one the subject with advanced AMD had worse visual acuity after the rapa trial.
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I recently started taking melatonin at night because I read about the hypothesis set out in the article below that Melatonin may rebuild telomeres re macular degeneration.
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@S_Sutherling
This is a useful paper too. Most of us here already take melatonin for sleep or to boost immunity, so it’s a bonus if it can also prevent or retard the progression of AMD. Good luck to you, sir.
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@S_Sutherling
Regarding the ScienceDirect paper, the subjects who had worse acuity after the Rapa trial may have experienced the unfortunate but inevitable progression of the disease over the course of a year, an outcome that may have had nothing to do with Rapa. In addition, those subjects whose vision declined had the wet version of macula, a category that excludes you and me. Thanks, though, for posting the paper, which I found to be eminently readable.
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