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Metformin could increase human’s life span to 120 years
Do you want to live 120 years? This could become possible sooner than ever expected thanks to a diabetes drug that could also be used to increase the life span up to 120 years, according to some researchers.
The human testing of the drug’s anti-aging properties is going to start the next year. Scientists believe that the drug will not only help us live longer, but it will also help to staying healthy right until the end, eradicating diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Metformin is an inexpensive drug that is already used for type 2 diabetes. It increases the oxygen flow at a cellular level and by doing so it is slowing the cell divisions that have the paradoxical role of both keeping us healthy and also leading us to death through the aging process.
A team of researchers has already studied the anti-aging effects of Metformin on roundworms, with exceptionally positive results. The next step is to begin a clinical trial on humans.
However, a team of scientists from Cardiff University has studied diabetes patients who were treated with Metformin and they found incontestable evidence that they lived longer with an average of eight years.
Scientists are positive that aging is not inevitable since all of our cells contain a DNA blueprint which has the power to keep a body functioning for an endless time. There are marine creatures which are not affected by aging in any way.
If the human trials will have results similar to those on roundworms, a 70 years old person treated with Metformin would biologically be as healthy as a 50-year-old.
Gordon Lithgow, Professor at the Californian Institute for Research on Ageing and one of the researchers from the team testing the drug explains that in the process of slowing the aging, all the pathology and diseases coming with it would be slowed down as well. He argues that’s revolutionary as nothing has been before, also saying that 25 years ago a human trial for an anti-aging medicine would have seemed impossible.
The clinical trial Targeting Aging with Metformin (TAME) will start in the US next year. The researchers are currently recruiting 3,000 people from 70 to 80 years old who have, or at least are at risk of dementia, heart disease or cancer.
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