Can a Brief Rapamycin Treatment in Older Age Extend Healthy Lifespan?

A drug called rapamycin helped mice live longer - males lived about 9% longer and females lived about 14% longer when they started taking the drug in late adulthood.

Scientists are finding that taking anti-aging medicines or treatments your whole life might not be needed and could even be bad for you, especially if you start when you're young. Instead, it might be better to wait until you're older and use these treatments for shorter periods.

Scientists gave middle-aged mice a drug called rapamycin for just 3 months and found it changed their gut bacteria, lowered cancer risk signs, and helped them live longer - proving you don't need long treatment to see benefits.

Scientists are trying different ways to reduce the bad side effects of a drug called rapamycin—like giving lower doses, combining it with other medicines, or taking breaks between doses—and recent findings suggest that taking breaks might help keep the good effects while reducing the bad ones.

Giving old mice the drug rapamycin less often (every 5 days instead of daily) at a specific dose helps them live longer without causing diabetes-like problems, showing that we might be able to get the good anti-aging effects without the bad side effects.