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Rapamycin not linked to longer life after kidney transplant

Adjusted median survival age was 64.6 years among recipients prescribed rapamycin and 64.3 years among those not prescribed it.

Paper by Darren E. Stewart, William E. Fitzsimmons
Figure 1 from GeroScience
Open the figure at full size
Figure 1. Stewart et al., CC BY

Our read

Populations
Studied:
Cohort study of kidney transplant recipients surviving the first year, median 11 years
What changed:
Median survival age was similar: 64.6 years with rapamycin against 64.3 years without rapamycin
The catch:
Cancer history and infection risk could influence prescribing and survival but were inadequately captured
In the record:
The 159th paper on rapamycin with results in people; 1,140 on record in all.
Why it’s aging research:
It studies an intervention with evidence of extending healthy life.

Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News

Paper
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Adult kidney transplant recipients who had survived one year with a functioning transplanted kidney were compared in an observational study using US registry data. It included 4,885 recipients prescribed rapamycin and 6,589 not prescribed it. Their median ages before adjustment were 48.0 and 51.9 years, respectively.

Prescription status matched at hospital discharge and the one-year visit. Median follow-up was 11 years. After adjustment for 18 demographic and clinical factors, median survival age was 64.6 years with rapamycin and 64.3 years without it. The range of likely differences included no difference. The researchers did not observe a meaningful improvement in long-term survival associated with rapamycin.

Why it matters

Long-term rapamycin use in transplant care offers evidence relevant to its proposed longevity benefits in humans, an area with few studies.

Caveats

Recipients prescribed rapamycin may have differed in health in ways the adjustment missed, and drug use changed during follow-up. The findings concern one-year kidney transplant survivors taking other immune-suppressing drugs, not healthy people seeking longer life.

Where the evidence stands

Rapamycin

Cells, worms or flies, mice and humans: replicated by independent labs.

C, W, M, H: cells, worms or flies, mice, humans. Dark: independent labs found the same change there. Light: one lab or one study. Outline: nothing yet.

Labs are independent when their papers share no last author and no institution.

Against: findings that point the other way from most findings on the same outcome.

No results posted: trials that ended over a year ago with no results on ClinicalTrials.gov and no paper reporting them.

Company ties: findings with an author at a company, or from a paper whose competing-interests statement declares ties to one.

  • 307 independent labs in 47 countries
  • 98 findings against
  • 538 trials, 174 with no results posted
  • Funders: National Institutes of Health and others
  • 156 of 1,629 findings with company ties
  • 53 of 538 trials sponsored by its developers

MTOR

Cells, worms or flies, mice and humans: replicated by independent labs.

C, W, M, H: cells, worms or flies, mice, humans. Dark: independent labs found the same change there. Light: one lab or one study. Outline: nothing yet.

Labs are independent when their papers share no last author and no institution.

Against: findings that point the other way from most findings on the same outcome.

No results posted: trials that ended over a year ago with no results on ClinicalTrials.gov and no paper reporting them.

Company ties: findings with an author at a company, or from a paper whose competing-interests statement declares ties to one.

Includes the processes named after it and trials of drugs aimed at it.

  • 271 independent labs in 41 countries
  • 21 findings against
  • 93 trials, 23 with no results posted
  • Funders: National Institutes of Health and others
  • 44 of 594 findings with company ties
  • 89 of 93 trials sponsored by developers of drugs aimed at it

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