The part getting the attention has to do with longevity; for that part of the article, data comes from "[t]hree groups of 6 rats".
This was a single experiment in which n=6 rats received the C60 ('buckyball') composition, n=6 received just the oil, and n=6 received water (which can cause adverse effects in rats). Interestingly, a protective effect of oil gavage in some rat strains has apparently been observed before ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3591539 ) but that's a bit of a distraction since the focus is on the C60.
All treatment stopped after a few months when the first control rat died. Given that the half life is 14h for peritoneal injection of this particular substance, there should have been nothing left of it after ~70h. How it continued to affect rat lifespan for several months afterward would require explanation.
However, the study is complicated since rats are sensitive to abdominal gavages and it tends to reduce their lifespan. Similarly, there are studies that show chronic administration of olive oil increases life span.
So you have a situation where one control (water only) leads to decreased lifespan and another control (vehicle - olive oil only) tends to increase lifespan. Neither of these are ideal controls since they are known to affect the rat.
That said, they did fancy stats and presumably accounted for this fact.
1. control (normal rats) - 22 month lifespan
2. olive oil rats - 26 month lifespan
3. olive oil + C60 rats - 42 month lifespan
So, only about 1/5th of the effect is explained by the olive oil.
... also, skimming the linked paper, the largest sample I see is "sixty rats randomly divided into 10 groups of 6 rats". I'm not sure if that's really large enough to draw any solid conclusions, and I don't see any P-values for the lifespan data -- but I freely admit I'm neither any kind of biologist nor a stats expert, so I may be talking rubbish.
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/a-puzzling-fuller...
The average life span of the Wistar rats used is 2-3 years (24 - 36 months). This was a small study size, but that's no so important in determining whether you have an actual means of life extension if you can show that any of your study group lived much longer than usual - but it is important when it comes to the degree of life extension. If the study group is small, as it is here, using only a handful of rats, then the size of the effect can be much more readily distorted by chance. This line in the paper jumped out at me: "Before C60 administration, the rats were fasted overnight but with access to water." If they failed to fast the control group, then we're looking at yet another study that failed to control for calorie restriction, and this is actually largely an intermittent fasting study - which has certainly been shown to extend life in rats.
This would explain how the olive oil administration also apparently extended life significantly...
I'm skeptical of significant antioxidant effects in vivo from a naturally occurring compound given that antioxidants in general haven't done much for longevity without being heavily designed substances (like SkQ1, for example). Simply flooding the body with antioxidants is usually slightly worse for longevity or a null effect - they don't get to the mitochondria where they might do some good.
More information from the authors would be good. All things considered, I'm sure we'll be hearing more on this in the years ahead; people will try to replicate it, the researchers will be grilled on their work, etc.
edit: Checked the data, interestingly there's a fairly wide range of death in the non-buckyball population (more than 1 year) but the buckyball population all died within 3 months, oddly enough none of the groups overlap, the data looks almost perfect. Will be interesting to see what the results are with more subjects.
Full Study: http://extremelongevity.net/wp-content/uploads/C60-Fullerene...
* One strange case/rat can modify the maximal or minimal a lot (For example, some kill a rat with a gun or you are "lucky" and get a Methuselah rat.)
* A strange event also can modify the average a lot (If someone kill a rat immediately at the beginning of the experiment, the "new" average is approximately (n-1)/n times the "original" average.
* But some unusual problem doesn't modify the median too much. The median changes from the value of a rat to the value of the next/former rat, which is usually very close. But it doesn't matter how small or big the strange case is, the median is essentially fixed between two values, so it is difficult to modify too much.
The real problem is that 6 is a small number and it is difficult to get good statistical result with only 6 cases.
[1]: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=fullerene+rats
The thing is, you can't patent fullerene so it will never ever make a great deal of money as a supplemental treatment, and so likely won't get that much attention.
Say you wanted to do this, at the obvious risk of some undiscovered toxicity, and say you weigh 200lbs.
At a cost of fullerene-c60 of $592 for 5 grams, at 1.7mg/kg, you're daily dose costs $18.26 http://www.google.com/?q=1.7mg%2Fkg+x+200lbs+x+592%2F5+dolla...
Even worse, however, is the olive oil you have to eat each day, with the C60 disolved into it is 39 teaspoons! http://www.google.com/?q=1.7+mg/kg+/+0.8+mg/ml+x+200+lbs+to+...
Which is 4/5ths of a cup of oil per day.
EDIT: I guess they didn't actually get a daily dose.
we treated the rats daily only during 7 days and weekly
during the first two months, then every two weeks until
one control rat died.
After five months of treatment (M15) one rat treated with
water only exhibited some palpable tumours in the
abdomen region. Due to the rapid development of tumours
(about 4 cm of diameter) this rat died at M17. As rats
are known to be sensitive to gavages, we decided to stop
the treatment for all rats and to observe their
behaviour and overall survival.
Interesting to note a daily diet of olive oil increased their average lifespan by 4 months alone! The Omega-3 fatty acids in it at a guess... but I wonder what the exact methods of action are for C60!
What I'd really like to see is a duplication with a larger sample size and some sort of blind setup with the people caring for the rats. And even then, there are good reasons to expect that this won't carry over to humans, given that humans already live so long for an animal of our body size.