undefined | Better HN

0 pointssuryong3y ago0 comments

Of course we cannot be 100 % sure it will work for humans, but the results on mice are promising and they are replicated by different labs which is very rare for anti-aging compounds. Rapamycin consistently shows effect. The effect on humans probably won't be anywhere near the 25% increase that is shown on mice, we will maybe get some extra years + better health span but the cumulative effect on society will probably be more than any current intervention. If we look at how ageing appears on different mammals, it is actually remarkably similar in terms of the decline, the speed is just different so I would say it is indeed quite promising if the mice results are replicated majority of times.

There was study on a drug what is now called Everolimus (mTOR inhibitor) and it showed that it increases the influenza vaccine effectiveness on elderly people https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25540326/

The dog aging study is ongoing and they are conducting double-blind placebo controlled trial for rapamycin on dogs. https://newsroom.uw.edu/news/tech-entrepreneurs-pledge-25-mi...

Some smaller scale study on rapamycin for dogs: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5411365/

I just don't think there is any compound currently that is more promising than rapamycin, so that's why I mentioned it here.

The most promising future treatment seems to do with cellular reprogramming as it increasingly looks like epigenetic alterations are responsible for a large part of aging, the epigenetic drift theory of aging. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41580-019-0204-5

Good video about epigenetic drift theory by Vera Gorbunova from University of Rochester. https://youtu.be/FhfXP_MX0U4?t=639

The current way of doing medicine for the elderly will never work simply because of ageing, it is like trying to bail water from a sinking ship without fixing the hole. Will work for a short while until it doesn't. I am also very skeptical of getting a working treatment for diseases like Alzheimer's disease without intervening in ageing.

Already when I was a teenager I realized that treating ageing is the holy grail of medicine and it seems recently this field is gaining more attention, but realistically it will be decades in minimum until we get some more radical treatments, might be even longer. At least the billionaires have realized that there is not much point being a billionaire if your body is breaking apart.

All we have now is lifestyle choices, possibly some medicine like rapamycin, and just hoping we don't get unlucky. Worrying trend is also people taking HGH for anti-aging but in the lab it seems to have complete opposite effect, it actually seems more like ageing accelerator.

0 comments

eesmith3y ago

That's a convoluted way to say you don't know of any demonstrated lifespan increase result beyond mouse and flies.

> it showed that it increases the influenza vaccine effectiveness

I was asking about lifespan increase, which was your point, not secondary effects.

> The dog aging study is ongoing

Which I already mentioned, and it's linked-to in my earlier comment.

> Some smaller scale study on rapamycin for dogs

Yes - it's literally the same paper I already mentioned in my earlier comment.

> more promising than rapamycin

The question I asked was: If it's only flies and (most) mice, is that really enough to call it "promising" in humans?

Not the comparative "which is the most promising of the many compounds which have been reported to increase mouse lifespan?"

> Rapamycin consistently shows effect

Really? You write that after my comment, where I quoted how "five studies that have reported either no effect or reduced lifespan when treated with rapamycin" and provided the citation that shows your assertion to be incorrect?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse