A drug makes people live longer in good health

A pill that slows ageing itself, rather than treating one disease, so that the people who take it live longer and stay well longer. Rapamycin does this in mice, even when started late in life, and several other drugs have followed it. None has been shown to do it in people, because a trial that could show it takes many years, and that gap between the animal result and the human one is exactly what the stage ladder is for. People already take rapamycin and metformin in the hope of it; hope is not a record.

What would count

A peer-reviewed, controlled trial in people reports that those taking the drug lived longer, or stayed free of age-related disease longer, than those taking a placebo, by a margin the trial was designed to detect. Swallowing the pill is not the upgrade; the extra healthy years are, so the first-human rung needs a human result, not a human volunteer.

Who settles it: The peer-reviewed trial report, and the regulator's approval record if it comes to that

Where it stands

Shown in animals. Reached on 8 July 2009, on the record of doi.org. Could move a stage within 5 to 20 years.

Outrunning Ageing tracks when this reaches the clinic: the same upgrade on that site, which keeps its own record of the same test and is checked against this one every week.

The last 2 readings

Once a week every upgrade is read against the news, against what would count above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every reading of this upgrade is on this week's reading.

• 18 October 2026 Nothing new

  Nothing dated 2026-10-11 to 2026-10-18 turned up. The metformin ageing trial (TAME) was last reported as awaiting funding; a one-year rapamycin trial and a long aspirin follow-up showed no lifespan or healthy-years benefit. The next rung needs a human result of extra healthy years.

• 16 October 2026 Nothing new

  Nothing in the window. The metformin trial (TAME) is still unfunded in full and has no result, with primary results unlikely before 2027 or 2028; the rapamycin trials in people measure body composition and blood markers, not healthy years. No human result meets the test.

Changes to this entry

• 2026-10-17, sibling: none → a-drug-adds-healthy-years-to-a-life. Cross-link to the matching entry on Outrunning Ageing, 'A drug makes people live longer in good health', which has pointed at this entry since 2026-10-16; the two sites keep their own records of the same test and the weekly reading compares the stages (Outrunning Ageing kickoff, item 7, ruled by John 2026-10-16).

Notes

The record is the 2009 report from the National Institute on Aging's testing programme, in which rapamycin fed to mice from twenty months of age (old, for a mouse) extended their lives. Human trials exist: a year-long rapamycin trial in healthy adults published in April 2025 measured body composition and blood markers, not lifespan, and found little; the long-planned metformin trial (TAME), designed to measure time to age-related disease, had not enrolled anyone for lack of money when this was written. An earlier 2008 report from the same mouse programme found a smaller lifespan gain from two other compounds in male mice; the rapamycin result is linked because it is the one that settled the rung for both sexes. Either kind of result, if positive and controlled, would move this entry to first human. When more such drugs reach people this entry may split into one per drug. Outrunning Ageing keeps its own record of this upgrade under the same name, linked from here on 2026-10-17; the weekly reading checks that the two stages agree.