Diabetes Drug Metformin Could Be The Anti-Ageing Drug Mankind Has Been

It may seem like something from the plot of a science fiction novel, but researchers have found that the diabetes drug metformin can extend the lifespan of animals. The diabetes drug metformin has been tested on animals and proven to extend their life.

While it's no fountain of youth promising immortality, the Food and Drug Administration in the United States has approved testing the drug in humans starting as early as next year, according to .

"That's revolutionary. That's never happened before", study adviser Professor Gordon Lithgow from the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing in California, told media. He further added, "I have been doing research into ageing for 25 years and the idea that we would be talking about clinical trial in humans for an anti-ageing drug would have been thought inconceivable".

Scientists now believe that it is possible to actually stop people growing old as quickly and help them live in good health well into their 110s and 120s.

IT has been used to control blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes since the 1940s, but scientists have stumbled across another use for the diabetic wonder drug, metformin - it slows the ageing process. Some marine creatures have already achieved this - they do not age or grow weaker with time.

Anti-aging drug could see people live to 120

Scientists believe that metformin, which costs 10p a day, could hold the key to anti-ageing because it boosts the number of oxygen molecules released into a cell.

When Belgian researchers tested metformin on roundworms, they discovered the worms aged slower and stayed healthier longer.

Research carried out by experts at Cardiff University in 2014 suggested that those living with diabetes and were administered the drug, lived longer than people without the condition. In the trials, the experts will focus more on drug's attack on the process of human ageing than individual diseases, explained Stuart Jay Olshansky, one of the project's members. The group of worldwide researchers has combined efforts to raise funds and attract 3,000 people between the ages of 70 and 80 who are now afflicted with or at risk of developing cancer, heart disease and dementia. However, throughout our life, as billions of cells divide, more and more diseases emerge as bits of DNA known as telomeres are shortened whenever mitosis occurs, making cells more likely to mutate and become cancerous.