Rapamycin is typically prescribed as an immunosuppressive, but off-label users believe it can do much more.
In March, Robert Berger, 69, a self-proclaimed “better-living-through-chemistry type of person,” started taking a small dose of rapamycin once a week with the goal of increasing his “health span” — the amount of time he might live without serious disease.
Rapamycin is typically prescribed to organ transplant patients to suppress their immune systems. But many scientists and longevity seekers like Mr. Berger think the drug can do much more than that: They say it can delay aging and age-related diseases.
Mr. Berger, who lives in Saratoga, Calif., learned about rapamycin through a friend who runs Rapamycin News, an online forum for people who experiment with the drug. He said he hasn’t experienced any “‘Oh my God, I’m a different person’ kind of change” since taking it, though his dentist remarked that his gums looked healthier than they had in a long time, and he feels like he has more energy these days. But he admits “it’s really hard to tell: How much is this placebo?”
On podcasts, social feeds and forums devoted to anti-aging, rapamycin is hailed as the “gold standard” for life extension. Longevity influencers Dr. Peter Attia and Bryan Johnson are believers, both saying they’ve taken rapamycin for years, and touting research to their millions of followers that shows the drug can extend the life spans of mice by over 20 percent.
There isn’t data on how many people use rapamycin for anti-aging purposes, since the drug is taken off label or purchased from overseas providers. Like Mr. Berger, some of the other users interviewed for this article said they believed rapamycin has provided mild benefits, such as helping them lose weight, alleviating their aches and pains or even causing them to regrow dark hair years after going gray.
But while users are optimistic and the evidence that rapamycin can increase longevity in animals is promising, the research in humans is thin and long-term side effects are uncertain. In the few studies in which rapamycin has been compared to a placebo, tangible benefits are hard to come by.