WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A major new study from Chinese scientists is changing how we think about aging. For a long time, people believed aging was something we couldn't slow down. But this research suggests that aging might not be so permanent after all.
The team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences looked at health data from 438 postmenopausal women in the U.S. Half of them were taking a diabetes drug called metformin, and the other half were on another diabetes medicine called sulfonylurea. The women on metformin had a 30 percent lower risk of dying before the age of 90.
To study how metformin affects aging, scientists also tested it on monkeys that are biologically similar to humans. Over a 40-month period, male monkeys were given metformin regularly. The researchers tracked their health using scans, blood tests, and organ studies.
The results were surprising. Metformin helped protect important organs like the liver, heart, lungs, and muscles from aging. It also seemed to slow down aging in the brain by activating genes that protect cells from damage.
Using advanced computer models, the scientists measured the biological age of the monkeys. The results showed that metformin lowered several key signs of aging, like DNA changes and protein levels, by as much as the equivalent of 18 human years.
This study suggests that metformin, a common diabetes drug, could also help slow down aging. It marks a new direction in medicine, one that focuses not just on treating diseases, but on slowing the aging process itself to help people live longer and healthier lives.
'A key advantage of our analysis was the long follow-up period after treatment initiation enabled by examination of a cohort with extensive follow-up from midlife to ages 90 and older, which is not feasible in typical randomized controlled trials,' the researchers wrote.
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