Getting Old Might Soon Be Considered A Disease, Treatable With Medication

by Monica Joshi

We can erase some of the ill-effects of growing old using medications. Wrinkle cream, botox and different oils have all been used for years to help erase the exterior symptoms of getting older, while vitamins, regular exercise and a good diet could help with the inside. However, they can only alter the process slightly or help mask it, but they don't reverse or slow it down.

Researchers want to tackle the issue on June 24th by meeting with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to get approval to test a drug that might slow down the aging process. Assuming that they succeed, they could be demonstrating, for the first time, that aging is a condition that can be treated with medicine. This new research could boost progress and funding for anti-aging research.

To date, pharmaceutical research has often had the goal of simply treating a disease or particular condition or symptom thereof. Often, however, if a patient is elderly, the body is unable to regenerate enough to cure itself completely. Usually, patients end up being treated for one life-threatening disease only to contract another and then die from it shortly thereafter.

These researchers are not aiming or even claiming to seek immortality, but rather their goal is to keep more people healthier for longer. The drugs that have been developed over the past decade have been ineffective and sold with false promises, e.g. nutrition shakes developed for ageing folk.

The experiment called Targeting Aging with Metformin (TAME) uses the well-known drug used to treat type 2 diabetes. The researchers behind the proposed experiment say that they're in a better position now thanks to animal studies in the past. The animal studies have shown that there are particular physiological pathways that can lead to greater longevity.

Metformin works by suppressing glucose production in the liver by decreasing the amount of glucose that you absorb from food. The drug researchers would test metformin in the trial, as data collected over 60 years have shown that it could have other effects as well. For example, it could delay the onset of heart disease, cancer, and cognitive decline.

The trial, as they have proposed, would include 3,000 participants aged 70-80 who have one or two of the above conditions. The researchers would then monitor the patients to see if the drug slows the progression of the disease over 5 – 7 years.

The funding for the trial, $50 million, has not yet been secured, but others in the field say their science is sound. By engaging the FDA, the researchers hope to make it easier to find the funding so that they can begin the trial in the next few years.

It would be interesting to see if the side effects of metformin outweigh the benefits in the FDA's decision for this trial. At least for now, based on some comments made by officials late last month, it seems that the FDA is inclined to say 'yes'.

The President & CEO of NPS Pharmaceuticals, Francois Nader, predicts tremendous growth for the pharmaceutical industry in the coming years as new cures and treatments are developed.