Metformin is a drug is approved for use by patients with Type 2 Diabetes, but in a recent study conducted by the Cardiff University in the UK, results point to the possibility of this drug increasing the lifespan in non-diabetics as well.
Statistics for patients with diabetes show that there are now about 29.1 million people affected with the disease in the United States. This figure is 9.3% of the total population of the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC.
Metformin, or Metformin hydrochloride, is a commonly prescribed oral anti-diabetic medicine that is used to treat Type 2 Diabetes. With this disease, the patient's body suppresses the effects of insulin resulting to uncontrolled amount of sugar and blood. Metformin increases the body's reaction to insulin so that the amount of glucose in the blood can be controlled. This biguanide drug also helps to decrease the amount of glucose produced by the liver as well as the amount of sugar that the body absorbs from food.
During the study, diabetic and non-diabetic subjects were treated with Metformin and sulfonylurea. In the non-diabetic subjects, the drug was found to shows signs of slowing the aging process, which researchers later linked to an increase in their lifespan. "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 sulfonylureas had a consistently reduced survival compared with non-diabetic patients. This was true even without any clever statistical manipulation," said Prof. Craig Currie and the Cardiff University's School Of Medicine. He also said that their findings indicate that this widely prescribed drug also has obvious benefits for people without diabetes. It also showed that Metformin had anti-cardiovascular and anti-cancer benefits, reducing the risk factor by about 33%.