What Is Metformin? 8 Things To Know About Diabetes Drug That Could Increase Human Life 120 Years

Scientists might have found the fountain of youth after a research showed that a common diabetes drug named Metformin could dramatically increase human life span and help us live into our 120s. Even though the drug's anti-aging properties have so far only been tested on animals analysts suggest there's a possibility this effect could be replicated in people. "If you target an aging process and you slow down aging then you slow down all the diseases and pathology of aging as well. That’s revolutionary. That’s never happened before," study adviser Professor Gordon Lithgow from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in California said to the media.

"I have been doing research into aging for 25 years and the idea that we would be talking about a clinical trial in humans for an anti-aging drug would have been thought inconceivable, but there is every reason to believe it's possible," Lithgow added, "the future is taking the biology that we've now developed and applying it to humans." The medicine will be tested in clinical trials next year in the U.S. for anti-aging purposes under a study named "Targeting Aging with Metformin," or "TAME."

What's Metformin and why is it used?

1. According to the Diabetes Forecast, Metformin was created in 1929 and marketed since the 50s by the French physician Jean Sterne.

2. The medicine is use in patients with type 2 diabetes and it aims to decrease glucose production in the liver, consequently lowering the levels of glucose in the bloodstream.

3. It helps to prevent kidney damage, blindness, nerve problems, loss of limbs, and sexual function problem by controling high blood sugar.

4. The pill works by helping to restore your body's proper response to the insulin you naturally produce.

5. Metformin is cheaply available for just $0.16 a day.

6. It also has been discovered as a treatment for kidney disease, polycystic ovary syndrome, gestational diabetes and cancer.

8. The drug is one of the most popular diabetes medications in the world.