Medicine For Longer Lifespan
Medicine for longer lifespan is the goal of increasing people’s healthy years and
decreasing their risk of disease vbostongginco. Drugs that have the ability to slow down aging in
humans are emerging, as are new ways to use existing drugs to prevent age-related
diseases.

Human lifespan could soon pass 100 years thanks to tech, says BofA
Metformin: a safe and widely used diabetes medication, may help you live
longer
The most promising candidate to extend human lifespan is metformin vbostongginco.com, a common
diabetes treatment that also slows aging in mice and worms. This is because it
increases the body’s sensitivity to insulin, which helps keep glucose levels down and
keeps cells functioning properly.
Rapamycin: a cancer-fighting drug that’s already used to treat organ transplant
patients, could make humans live longer
Rapamycin is a peptide that attacks the senescent cell, which is responsible for
many of the hallmarks of aging. It has been shown to extend life in yeast, worms and
mice. It is now being tested in 500 dogs as part of the Dog Aging Project in the US,
and the results are expected to come soon.
Xu’s team have found that when they give two different senolytic drugs to mice,
rogue cells are destroyed and the animals become more robust. They also develop
more muscle tissue and live for five to six more years.
They also found that this drug was able to stop the onset of chronic disease in the
animals. However, the researchers warn that it’s not a drug that is suitable for all
people.

Next-level health tech
The question is whether it would be worth funding medical research to extend
lifespan in the long term if it increased morbidity. If extending the number of years a
person lives in the future meant that more people were living with high levels of
disease and disability, then it might be preferable to focus on reducing death rates
and ensuring better quality of life during a normal life span.
This approach would refocus most of the medical research budget on the causes of
disease, rather than focusing on treating it. This will result in a reduction in deaths
caused by disease and improve the quality of life for the elderly.
The best way to increase the quantity and quality of life in a population is to
compress morbidity, which is the difference between healthy years and the number
of years that someone has to spend with age-related diseases, disabilities,
dementias or dysfunctions (Fig 3). If we want to see more people live longer, then it
is worth investing in medical research to prevent the onset of these diseases and
ensure a good quality of life when it’s over.