The diabetes drug Metformin has been making headlines lately as a commonly used medication helping to improve the lives of diabetes patients for many years. But a new study says that this drug could also have another benefit which could add years to your life.
Indeed, the United States Food and Drug Administration has just approved Metformin for human trials to discern if it can, in fact, extend the human life span to 120 years.
According Scottish ageing expert Professor Gordon Lithgow—form the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing in California—this is a major breakthrough. He explains, “If you target an ageing process and you slow down ageing then you slow down all the diseases and pathology of ageing as well. That’s revolutionary. That’s never happened before.
He goes on to say, “I have been doing research into ageing for 25 years and the idea that we would be talking about a clinical trial in humans for an anti-ageing drug would have been though inconceivable,” adding “But there is every reason to believe it’s possible.
The future is taking the biology that we’ve now developed and applying it to humans. 20 years ago ageing was a biological mystery. Now we are starting to understand what is going on.”
Lithgow details “Enough advancements in ageing science have been made to lead us to believe it’s plausible, it’s possible, it’s been done for other species and there is every reason to believe it could be done in us. This would be the most important medical intervention in the modern era, an ability to slow ageing.”
For example, the Office for National Statistics indicates a baby girl born today has an average life expectancy of 82.8 years; a baby boy: 78.8 years.
