Pharmaceutical interventions to slow human aging. Are we ready for cocktails?

Abstract

Slowing human aging with pharmaceuticals is now recognized as a feasible strategy. However, the design of clinical trials is still focused on single drug approaches. The process of aging has multiple pathways, which no current drug has been shown to effectively target. Therefore, it is of interest to study combinations, or cocktails, of drugs. A recently published article reported that a drug cocktail of rapamycin, acarbose and phenylbutyrate slowed aging in middle-aged mice treated for three months. The impact of this report is discussed, with the implications for determining endpoints in humans for testing drug cocktails as well as testing other drug combinations.