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A Diabetes Drug That May Increase Lifespan To 120 Years

by Shirley Johanna on Nov 30 2015 6:49 PM

The diabetes drug, metformin, could extend lives by decades and keep people healthy. It can slow down the aging process and prevent diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

A Diabetes Drug That May Increase Lifespan To 120 Years
The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a diabetes drug for clinical trial that could result in people being able to live healthily well into their 120s.
The pill's developers hope that it could one day wipe out diseases like Alzheimer's and that they can slow down the aging process in humans, making those in their 70s as healthy a 50-year-old.

"If you target an aging process and you slow down aging then you slow down all the diseases and pathology of aging as well," said aging expert Prof Gordon Lithgow, of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in California, and one of the study advisers.

Researchers have already proven that the diabetes drug metformin extends the life of animals. Now experts want to see if the same effects can be replicated in humans.

Last year researchers at Cardiff University found that when patients with diabetes were given the drug they lived longer than others without the condition, even though they should have died eight years earlier on average. The trials are expected to take five to seven years.

The drug will aim to attack the process of aging, rather than individual diseases, one of the project's members, Stuart Jay Olshansky, has explained.

Source-ANI


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