Rapamycin raises cognition throughout life span, study in mice shows

Cognitive skills such as learning and memory diminish with age in everyone, and the drop-off is steepest in Alzheimer's disease. Texas, USA, scientists seeking a way to prevent this decline reported exciting results last week with a drug that has Polynesian roots.

The researchers, appointed in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio, added rapamycin to the diet of healthy mice throughout the rodents' life span. Rapamycin, a bacterial product first isolated from soil on Easter Island, enhanced learning and memory in young mice and improved these faculties in old mice, the study showed.

This study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Alzheimer's Association and the Ellison Medical Foundation, became available on-line June 28 as a manuscript in press in the journal Neuroscience.