GoKawiilObesity drugs such as semaglutide (sold as Wegovy) are usually administered by injection.Credit: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg/Getty
The list of ailments that blockbuster GLP-1 drugs might treat continues to grow, raising the question of whether they will help with the most inevitable ailment: ageing. A study published in Nature on 2 September1 hints that the answer is yes, reporting that older female mice taking a GLP-1 obesity drug lived longer than did older mice not taking one. The treatment also slowed several biological changes associated with ageing.
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This paper is the latest in a handful of studies2,3 suggesting that GLP-1 medications — which mimic the glucagon-like peptide 1 hormone and are usually prescribed for obesity and type 2 diabetes — might have anti-ageing properties. Most of the evidence so far has been limited to mice, but clinical trials are starting to explore the possibility in humans.
In the quest for longevity therapies, GLP-1 drugs “have been on the top of everyone’s list as the most exciting candidates”, says Michael Corley, a scientist who specializes in ageing at the University of California, San Diego.
“This is a very rigorous animal study that showed a positive signal,” Corley says. But the findings are still preliminary, and it could take years to prove whether GLP-1 drugs can be prescribed for longevity, he adds.
Dieting mice
Previous studies have shown that restricting calories is an effective method for extending lifespan in several animals, including mice4. Because GLP-1 drugs activate receptors in the body that trigger reduced food cravings, it’s natural for scientists to ask whether the medications can slow ageing by decreasing calorie intake, says Danica Chen, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who is a co-author of the Nature study.
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She and her colleagues decided to test this hypothesis in 20-month-old healthy female mice, roughly equivalent in age to 60-year-old humans. Animals treated with the GLP-1 drug semaglutide (marketed under the brand names Ozempic and Wegovy), had a median lifespan of 834 days — 12% longer than mice in the control group, which lived for a median of 742 days.
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