Is Rapamycin plus acarbose legal in the United Kingdom?

Started at 9 months, rapamycin 14.7 ppm plus acarbose 1,000 ppm extended median mouse lifespan 28 percent in females and 34 to 37 percent in males, the largest pooled effect the Interventions Testing Program has published, and worked at all three sites in both sexes. In males it exceeded historical rapamycin-alone cohorts; in females it did not. No human has taken the two together in any study.

Rapamycin and acarbose are the two drugs with the most consistently replicated lifespan effects in the NIA Interventions Testing Program, and in 2017 the programme fed them together. This page covers that experiment.

Mechanism: Rapamycin inhibits mTORC1; acarbose inhibits intestinal alpha-glucosidases and blunts the post-meal glucose rise, with much of its systemic effect thought to run through altered gut fermentation and microbiome. The ITP combined them because they act on different nutrient-sensing inputs, because acarbose might offset the glucose intolerance rapamycin causes in mice, and because each had replicated on its own.

Regulatory history: Both drugs are FDA-approved for other indications (sirolimus for transplant rejection and other uses; acarbose for type 2 diabetes). The combination is not approved for anything and has never been given to people in a study. The lifespan result is in mice and the comparison to single drugs is historical, not contemporaneous.

Licenses medicines for the UK market. A compound without a marketing authorisation is an unlicensed medicine, which can only lawfully be supplied for human use through a prescriber under the specials scheme, not sold as a research product.

The classification above is the The Longevity Archive reading of Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency listings for Rapamycin plus acarbose at the reviewed date, not a legal opinion. Rules change, and importing, prescribing and possessing a compound can each be treated differently. Check the regulator directly before acting on anything here.