Longevity Briefs: Rapamycin Reverses Age‐Related Heart Decline In Mice

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Longevity briefs provides a short summary of a novel research, medicine, or technology that caught the attention of our researchers in Oxford, due to its potential to improve our health, wellbeing, and longevity.

Why is this research important: Rapamycin is a drug that has been found to extend lifespan in numerous animal models including mice. This lifespan extension seems to be accompanied by a reversal of age-related changes in the heart.

Rapamycin or related compounds have been shown to increase lifespan or improve other markers of aging in a range of organisms.

What did the researchers do: Researchers treated 2 year-old mice with rapamycin and compared their health outcomes to mice who did not receive the drug. This included measuring the health of their cardiovascular systems and metabolism.

Key takeaway(s) from this research: Rapamycin had significant benefits for late‐life cardiovascular health, reversing age‐related changes in the heart. This included changes in gene expression that favoured lower inflammation and reduced enlargement of cardiac muscle (hypertrophy). Rapamycin therefore not only extends the lifespan, but also benefits cardiac function and protects against age-related changes in the heart in mice.