Could diabetes drug metformin prolong life?

One of the oldest diabetes drugs on the market, metformin, could also deliver benefits that help prevent serious health complications, according to new research.

A study on mice from researchers at the National Institute of Aging found that metformin can not only slow the rate of cancer progression, reduce heart disease and possibly even limit the effects of Alzheimer's, it could also prolong life.

Fight off aging

Researchers noted that aging-related diseases like cancer and heart disease are connected along a "biological pathway." Metformin, along with resveratrol, a compound found in red wine, and rapamycin, a medication used to help organ transplants from being rejected, seems to affect the same pathway and therefore helps to slow the aging process.

The mice study found that metformin could extend life by a few weeks, which, in human years, is the equivalent of 3-4 years. Based on the findings, researchers said that future anti-aging treatments might focus more on prevention than treating illness after it has already manifested.

USA Today reports:

Brian Kennedy, CEO of The Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, Calif., said he envisions a day when, instead of giving people drugs after they get sick, healthy people will be able to take pills to avoid illness. Such a pill wouldn't prevent all aging, he said, but by delaying the deadliest diseases for even a few years, it could have a dramatic benefit on an individual's quality of life and the nation's economy.

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Should you pop a pill?

Don't run out an get a prescription for metformin just yet, the researchers warned. Mice-model studies are good for experimentation, but there is still little known about how the drug might affect humans who do not need it for diabetes control. Side effects of the drug might include kidney problems or diarrhea.

Yet the research points to the possibility of a new drug – one that could be developed to amplify metformin's anti-aging benefits.

"It's clear that we are edging toward developing a pharmaceutical intervention that is going to be able to delay or postpone aging," said study lead Rafael de Cabo, a biogerontologist at the National Institute of Aging. "For how much and how long, I have no idea."

The research was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Source: USA Today