The age at which people have children is increasing in almost all developed countries. And at the same time, there is an increase in the number of couples struggling with fertility problems, which are much more common (for both sexes, but especially for women) starting from the age of 35-37. The search for strategies to improve the chances of conception for mature couples is therefore very much alive. And a group of researchers from Columbia University believes they have a solution: rampamycin, a molecule commonly used as an anti-rejection drug in transplant recipients, which appears to extend the fertile age of women by an average of five years.
The study is still in its early stages, so we must trust the researchers’ words, who define the effects seen on the very first participants in the trial as extremely promising. They certainly have the results obtained previously on mice on their side, in which rampamycin has been shown to be able to extend the average lifespan of the animals, and to delay the onset of menopause and preserve ovarian reserve in female specimens.
How does it work
The mechanism of action of the drug is not entirely clear, but it is suspected to have something to do with the ability of this molecule to reduce the number of primordial follicles – the structures that contain immature eggs – that are activated with each menstrual cycle. Since the number of follicles present in the female body is finite (they are all already present at birth, unlike sperm, which are produced cyclically), reducing the amount that is “wasted” each month can help preserve the ovarian reserve (the number of remaining follicles), and therefore delay the onset of menopause, and lengthen the years of fertility.
What works for a mouse, of course, does not necessarily work for humans. For this reason, American researchers recruited 50 women over 35 for a pilot study, in which the volunteers received a daily dose of rampamycin (or a placebo), and then underwent a series of tests to verify the effects the drug had on their ovarian reserve. According to the researchers, the results obtained give hope that rampamycin could reduce the aging of the ovaries by about 20%, the equivalent of about five additional years of fertility.
Results not entirely unexpected
That’s not all, because the participants who received the drug also reported improvements in their health, memory, physical energy and the appearance of their balls and hair. Results that were not entirely unexpected, given that rampamycin has long been studied as a possible therapy to increase human longevity. At the moment, the researchers are working on the second phase of their study, and aim to recruit a total of one thousand volunteers to validate the results obtained in the pilot study. It will take a couple of years to have the new results. But if everything goes as hoped, rampamycin could soon help many women to widen the window of opportunity for a natural pregnancy.