Metformin is the primary first-line drug used to treat type 2 diabetes. DiabetesBut a new study in monkeys suggests that it might one day be used to slow brain aging as well.
There have been signs of the drug’s anti-aging effects before. Retrospective the study People taking medication for diabetes, worm, jump and rodent the study.
But metformin’s anti-aging effects hadn’t yet been tested in primates, so biologist Yang Yuanhang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues looked at cynomolgus monkeys (Macaque), one of our closest relatives.
All of the monkeys used in the study were male and aged between 13 and 16 years, which corresponds to a developmental age of 40 to 50 years in humans.
The selected macaques were given metformin continuously every day for just over three years, a treatment roughly equivalent to the standard human treatment for managing type 2 diabetes.
Other monkeys of the same age received the same non-drug treatment, and to specifically account for the effects of age, the researchers also followed up with control groups of six young (3-5 years old) and three middle-aged (10-12 years old) monkeys.
“T“These findings suggest that metformin may have potential to slow brain aging and treat neurodegenerative and other chronic diseases,” the researchers wrote. write.
They assessed aging in the monkeys in terms of physiology, memory, learning, cognitive flexibility, and brain morphology.
“Specifically, we utilized whole-tissue transcriptomics, DNA methylomics, plasma proteomics, and metabolomics to develop an innovative monkey aging clock and applied it to measure the effects of metformin on aging,” the authors wrote. write.
The drug reduced aging-related gene transcriptional variations in multiple different tissues, affected aging-related pathways such as cell death and fibrosis, and reactivated aging-repressed pathways involved in development, such as DNA repair and lipid metabolism.
It reduced the biological age of the aged monkeys on several measures, Aging of the liver and increased production of chemicals that protect the liver. But most importantly, the study found that metformin actually slowed brain aging and was neuroprotective in elderly monkeys, “rescuing” their frontal lobes by an average of about six years.
“C“Conclusive evidence of functional rejuvenation is scarce, and a full understanding of the side effects in humans remains unclear,” the authors wrote. write.
The researchers note that the study did not assess mortality or track long-term effects after the macaques were taken off the drug.
American experts were impressed by the rigor of the experiment, which was described by molecular geneticist Alex Soukas of Massachusetts General Hospital. Natural Max Kozlov ““This is the most quantitative and thorough study of metformin’s effects outside of mice.”
But Rafael de Cabo, a translational aging scientist at the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore, pointed out It is of concern that only a few monkeys received the drug and that such long-term primate studies are expensive, so the sample did not include female monkeys.
““Although the comprehensive effects and mechanisms of metformin in primates have yet to be fully elucidated, our findings indicate a significant delay in the ageing process,” the authors wrote. Conclusion.
“This insight is an important step forward and will guide the advancement of clinical strategies to mitigate the effects of aging and its associated health problems.”
But ultimately, the animal study appears to be just one step in the researchers’ ambitions to test it in humans — and it appears to have impressed some key stakeholders.
Members of the Chinese research team have already Phase 2 clinical trial in 120 people It is working with a pharmaceutical company that makes metformin to test similar effects in humans.
“Our study is pioneering the systematic reduction of multidimensional biological age in primates through metformin, paving the way for advances in pharmaceutical strategies for human ageing,” the team said. write.
This study cell.
