Study record
TA-65 meta-analysis (Su et al., 2025): published synthesis with material trial-table discrepancies
Published synthesis — source-integrity concerns
Two caveats govern every page on this site. (1) Telomere length is a contested aging biomarker — it is measured differently by different methods, varies between tissues, and "longer" is not straightforwardly "healthier"; changing a telomere-length or telomerase-activity number in a trial is not the same as slowing human aging. (2) Activating telomerase is not risk-free — telomerase expression is low in many differentiated normal tissues, while some normal proliferating cells can express it. Cancer can also use telomere maintenance; the included human records do not resolve long-term cancer risk from pharmacological activation. Tellingly, the FDA-approved telomerase inhibitor — imetelstat (RYTELO, 2024) — inhibits telomerase to treat cancer (lower-risk MDS), the opposite direction from the anti-aging "activation" narrative.
○ Published synthesis: source-integrity concerns; no efficacy grade assigned
Record verify: source publication identified; see evidence and limitations
| Design | Published systematic review/meta-analysis with documented original-study discrepancies |
| PMID | 41286474 |
| PMCID | PMC12644169 |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10565-025-10115-6 |
| Citation status | Original publication identity matched by title, author and DOI; relevant full-text sections, results and limitations examined 2026-10-14. The review is a real publication, but its included-study table contradicts original trial designs and interventions. Reported pooled results must be read with the source-integrity limitations stated here. |
Five-qualifier claim
| Species / population | The review reports 8 RCTs and 750 participants, but its Table 1 materially disagrees with the cited original papers; these are reported review figures, not independently validated pooled trial counts. |
| Exposure, route, schedule | The review describes TA-65 10–50 mg/day, but the included-study table lists non-TA-65 and non-randomized sources as completed TA-65 RCTs. This exposure summary cannot be relied on as a verified trial set. |
| Comparator / duration | Published meta-analysis, not an original randomized trial. Table 1 labels Harley 2011 an RCT although its original paper has no control group; it labels Lavretsky 2013 a TA-65 trial although that paper randomized meditation versus music. |
| Endpoint / numeric result | The paper reports telomere-length SMD 0.47, frailty SMD 0.09 (p=0.15), and CRP/IL-6 SMD −0.11 (p=0.07); the latter two are not statistically significant. Material trial-identification, sample-size and intervention discrepancies in its Table 1 prevent treating any of these pooled numbers as a reliable estimate of TA-65 efficacy or safety. |
| What it did NOT establish | Publication identifiers are genuine (PMID 41286474, PMCID PMC12644169). This does not validate the underlying pooled evidence. The original cited study identities conflict with Table 1; no dependable clinical or lifespan conclusion should be drawn from this synthesis without resolution. |
Interventions
Primary reference
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41286474/
Each identifier above was confirmed against the primary record; the citation status names the source and the date. An identifier that could not be confirmed is left empty and named as such in the record, never filled in from a secondary source.