Could This Transplant Drug Add 5 Years to a Woman's Fertility?

You don't have to watch "The Substance" to recognize society's obsession with antiaging: endless products promise to keep you looking younger on the outside. Additional tactics like eating particular diets or trying to boost your metabolism attempt to tackle antiaging from the inside out. But there's one drug you've probably never heard of that many doctors feel confident can actually slow the aging process: rapamycin.

Several studies back up the claims, but until recently, most research has focused on people 50-years-old and older. Now, a new study claims younger women can benefit from taking the drug. Since it's capable of extending fertility and delaying menopause, it would benefit women's whole-life health in a multitude of ways.

So, what is rapamycin, and should you be taking it? Read on to learn more about the benefits and risks associated with the drug — and whether you should ask your doctor about it at your next visit.

Experts Featured in This Article

Zev Williams, PhD, is the director of the Columbia University Fertility Center in NYC.

What Is Rapamycin, and How Does It Work?

Discovered about 30 years ago, rapamycin was first celebrated for its antifungal capabilities. Further testing revealed it was a great immunosuppressant, so it began being used in kidney transplant patients to help prevent the body from rejecting the new organ. By 1999, the FDA had approved using the drug for kidney transplants.

But how can this drug be effective at slowing down the aging process, too? Dr. Zev Williams, PHD and Director of the Columbia University Fertility Center, says it all comes down to what's known as the mTOR pathway: "It's this ancient signaling mechanism that's used throughout the body to govern things like cell growth and differentiation and the rates of it," he tells PS. "People have shown that you can manipulate that and make mutations so that the rate gets much quicker or slower."

Manipulating and inhibiting the pathway commences processes like reducing inflammation and accelerating autophagy, which is the body's way of breaking down and recycling damaged cells to create new ones.Taking rapamycin inhibits the mTOR pathway, which translates into antiaging benefits. A number of studies have proven the drug's positive effects, such as older people having a better response to getting a flu vaccine and seeing increases in lean muscle mass.

Rapamycin and Menopause

As it pertains to women's health, Dr. Williams and his team have been studying women ages 35 to 45 to understand if rapamycin can affect how quickly ovarian reserve gets depleted. "There's a lot of health benefits that women have over men that persist as long as the ovary is functioning," says Dr. Williams. He stresses that finding a way to extend ovarian reserve could have a huge impact on women's whole-life health.

A woman is born with all of the eggs she'll ever have, and once those eggs are gone, she enters menopause, which triggers a litany of potential side effects like hot flashes, weight gain, and low libido. Hitting menopause also has adverse health effects like increasing the risk for things like heart disease.

Each month, a woman's ovary releases dozens of eggs, and typically, one of them develops into a mature egg. Slowing down how many eggs are released would mean extending women's fertility and, in turn, delaying menopause. Early results from the study are promising, showing that taking rapamycin could decrease ovarian aging by 20 percent — which may not sound substantial, but translates into an extra five years before entering menopause. "This [rapamycin] has been widely studied for decades and it's readily available, so if it works [to slow ovarian loss], it could really have a positive impact in human health."

What Are the Risks of Rapamycin?

It's essential to consider any potential side effects when trying a new drug. Taken in high amounts or continuously, rapamycin suppresses the immune system, which can lead to an increased risk for infections. But taken in low doses and intermittently, Dr. Williams says it actually boosts the immune system.

While rapamycin has been widely studied and is generally considered safe, limited testing has been conducted on younger people. Your doctor could theoretically prescribe it today to help slow your ovarian loss, but Dr. Williams says he'd recommend waiting until there's more data around this particular aim. His team will be expanding their current study to include more than 1,000 participants — at which point he says there will be enough data to definitely prove if the drug can safely and effectively delay menopause.

Still, those results may take time. For context, the FDA typically requires medications undergo three phases of clinical trials before reviewing whether it's safe enough for approval: the first has a small group take the drug for several months; the second has a bigger group take it for up to two years; the third has a group of several hundred to thousand participants take it for up to four years.

Could I Get Rapamycin Over the Counter?

Rapamycin must be prescribed by a doctor, so talk to yours if you're interested in trying it. But again, Dr. Williams suggests waiting until more research confirms the benefits of this drug before beginning to take it. Also worth noting: Insurance likely won't cover the medication if you're using it off-label, and it's currently only FDA approved for treating tumor-based cancers, preventing organ rejection in kidney transplants, and coating stents used for heart disease.

Elliott Harrell is a Raleigh, NC-based freelance writer with two little girls who runs a sales team by day and writes about things she's passionate about, like women's health, parenting, and food, at night. In addition to PS, her work can be found in The Everymom, Motherly, Business Insider, Eater, and more.