Researchers with the Dog Aging Project in Seattle gave 24 healthy middle-aged pet dogs either a low dose of the drug rapamycin or a placebo for ten weeks, then checked their hearts with ultrasound before and after.
The rapamycin-treated dogs showed no clinical side effects compared with the placebo group. Their echocardiograms suggested improvement in age-related measures of heart function: fractional shortening and the E/A ratio reached significance, and ejection fraction trended the same way.
The trial was a small safety pilot, ten weeks in 24 dogs, not proof that rapamycin extends a dog's life. A later six-month trial in 17 dogs at Texas A&M found no significant change in heart function, and a larger, longer Dog Aging Project trial is now under way.
Read the original study
Urfer et al., GeroScience, 2017 · doi.org/10.1007/s11357-017-9972-z
Ten weeks, a hint that later trials must confirm.
Source
- Urfer, S. R., Kaeberlein, T. L., Mailheau, S., Bergman, P. J., Creevy, K. E., Promislow, D. E. L., & Kaeberlein, M. (2017). A randomized controlled trial to establish effects of short-term rapamycin treatment in 24 middle-aged companion dogs. GeroScience, 39(2), 117–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-017-9972-z