NIA Interventions Testing Program

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A United States National Institute on Aging programme, running since 2004, that tests candidate lifespan-extending compounds in genetically heterogeneous mice simultaneously at three independent sites, with a common protocol and pre-specified analysis. Its design is a direct response to the field's reproducibility problem: most published mouse lifespan results come from a single laboratory using a single inbred strain, and effects that look large under those conditions frequently disappear when the genetic background, the diet or the animal facility changes. The programme has confirmed a small number of compounds — rapamycin most convincingly — and has failed to confirm a considerably larger number of widely promoted ones, including several sold as human supplements. Its negative results are the more valuable part of the record and the part least reported.