Fig. 1: Chronic rapamycin treatment decreases the lifespan of Terc^−/− mice.

a Three-month-old Terc^+/+ and G2 Terc^−/− mice were fed control chow or chow-containing encapsulated rapamycin at 42 ppm and followed until the humanitarian endpoint (HEP). b, c Kaplan–Meier survival curves of Terc^+/+ and G2 Terc^−/− mice of both sexes fed rapamycin or control diet b. Kaplan–Meier tumor-free survival curves, including only mice that did not present any neoplastic pathology at the time of death (c). The variation of rapamycin-fed mice median survival is indicated as the percentage of that of the control-fed mice of the same genotype; green arrows: rapamycin-mediated increase in median survival; red arrows: rapamycin-mediated decrease in median survival. Statistical significance was determined by the log-rank test. The p values are indicated. d, e Body weight changes in female (d) and male (e) mice of both genotypes fed rapamycin or control diet. Statistical significance was determined by two-tailed Student’s t-test. f, g Incidence of lymphomas (f) and sarcomas (g) in the four groups of mice. h The percentage of mice presenting mild, medium, or severe intestinal atrophy according to histopathological analysis. For a detailed histological description see Methods. A chi-square test was used to calculate statistical differences in the incidence of both tumors and intestinal lesions. i Mean age at the HEP of the G2 Terc^−/− mice used for the histopathological analysis in h. A two-tailed Student’s t-test was used to calculate the statistical significance. Error bars represent the standard error (SE). n = number of mice; *p ≤ 0.05; **p ≤ 0.01; ***p ≤ 0.001; n.s. not significant. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.