The world's first anti-ageing drug will be tested on humans next year in trials which could result in people being able to live healthily well into their 120s.
Scientists now believe it is possible to stop people growing old and consign diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to history.
Although it might seem like science fiction, researchers have already proven that the diabetes drug metformin extends the life of animals, and the Food and Drug Administration in the US has now given the go-ahead for a trial to see if the same effects can be replicated in humans.
If successful it will mean that a person in their 70s would be as biologically healthy as a 50-year-old.
...Scientists think the best candidate for an anti-ageing drug is metformin, the world's most widely used diabetes drug which costs just 10 cents a day.
Metformin increases the number of oxygen molecules released into a cell, which appears to boost robustness and longevity.
When Belgian researchers tested metformin on the tiny roundworm C. elegans the worms not only aged slower, but they also stayed healthier longer. Last year Cardiff University found anecdotal evidence that when patients with diabetes were given the drug metformin they lived longer than others without the condition, even though they should have died eight years earlier on average.
The new clinical trial called Targeting Aging with Metformin, or TAME, is scheduled to begin in the US next winter. Scientists from a range of institutions are currently raising funds and recruiting 3,000 70 to 80-year-olds who have, or are at risk of, cancer, heart disease and dementia.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=11553026
13 comments:
If any of your are smart, you will buy stock now. You'll thank me later.
Oh man, you just dredged a deeply submerged memory.
Jay Jenson. I'm amazed the name comes with images, usually it's the first thing to go. Singularly the most anal individual I've ever encountered. He organized his life rigidly for success allowing no indulgences every endeavor thoughtful and manic.
He was talking about his job and his education and how getting an MBS in tax accounting made him feel more confident in his job. His home unnecessarily large for one man and spotless. And I mean spotless.
He asked me to co-host a dinner. He didn't know what he was doing but he knew precisely what he wanted. Together we executed his idea, using his purchases and his utensils at his home. It was fun. We figured it out and had fun. It worked out very well, veal cutlets that fry in five seconds. A stack of those with some easy side and ice cream with chocolate twirls, we figured that out too using the pan and the snow.
At the end of dinner the guests stood and applauded.
How about that, huh? Ever have people stand and applaud your dinner? Neither of us are even cooks, that's the thing. It was all just an experiment.
Jay told me intended to live to 100 and panned his finances accordingly and there is nothing to think he wouldn't do precisely that.
Then one day he showed us a recording of his studio dance, a competition in costume and I thought I would loose my ass laughing. He looked like a perfect cartoon of that sort of thing.
Then moved to Mississippi coast built a house with its own lighthouse tower. I had no reason to keep contact but other people did so all this comes by report, Jay Jenson got sick and died.
Less than half way to one hundred.
And that's why the memory is sunken.
MBA
Well, I have been taking metformin for almost 20 years now. I will dance on your graves! It is a superb drug for diabetes control. With metformin, diet and exercise I have had my diabetes controlled for 12 years now. But, diabetes is progressive. I have to lose weight. I do it in stages. I started in 2003 tipping the scales @ 280. I got down to 250 and had blood sugar managed. But, then had to drop to 230, which was good for several years. I'm now down to 210 and shooting for 200. Smart athletes know you have to lose weight as you age if you want to perform. The first athlete who I saw do that was Yaz.
Metformin is good in that it allows your body to use more of the insulin your pancreas produces. It makes your cells more efficient. So, I could see the benefits that deborah has in this superb and informative post. The biggest side effect is that it gives some people diarrhea. So, there are other drugs for those folks but this has been the go to drug for docs the last couple decades. I wonder if Trump uses it?
"The biggest side effect is that it gives some people diarrhea [of the typing fingers]."
It was moving to Mississippi that put the kibosh on his plan to live to a hunnerd.
Maybe my doc will prescribe metformin for me. Not likely but nothing to lose by asking.
ricpic, Some women use metformin off label to lose weight. Since it so diligently controls blood sugar, it controls sugar spikes that increase appetite. I have extra if an alcoholic, bloated, professor needs some. Saw her recently, I see why there are no photos posted lately. LOL!
Fascinating that that article misrepresents the mechanism by which metformin allegedly might increase lifespan.
They write "Metformin increases the number of oxygen molecules released into a cell, which appears to boost robustness and longevity." That sounds like the extra oxygen improves the health of the individual cells because oxygen is good and more must be better.
The reality is that the oxygen actually damages those cells and if the theory is correct makes them healthier by subjecting them to harm. That might seem to be a small point but it's as if they specifically avoided giving the reader that fact. I suppose it would have raised questions among readers looking for happy talk.
"That which does not kill you makes you stronger" has always been bullshit.
One other excellent quote from a Professor Craig Currie who's involved in this is:
"What we found was illuminating. Patients treated with metformin had a small but statistically significant improvement in survival compared with the cohort of non-diabetics, whereas those treated with sulphonylureas had a consistently reduced survival compared with non-diabetic patients. This was true even without any clever statistical manipulation."
The last sentence is the tell.
Rabel, I don't know that that makes your point. It looks like the info is true and didn't NEED manipulation.
Think of all the doc who will now be inundated with Metformin requests. The manufacturer won't mind, will the FDA if the doc complies?
Yeah, Chip, a definite monkey wrench in the works!
Wow live to 120 ... Social security is def going broke !!!
They will perfect the dosage about two weeks after my death.
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