For centuries, mankind has been trying to figure out a way to extend human lives. The answer to this long-standing question may have been found, in the form of a tiny pill that costs just 10 cents.
Scientists are set to test on human beings next year the world's first anti-ageing drug called metformin that can possibly extend lives up to 120 years old, according to the New Zealand Herald.
To make it even more interesting, the makers of the anti-aging drug claim that the latter can also wipe out diseases that go with ageing such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.
Sounds too good to be true? The researchers that developed the drug have already conducted tests that proved its effectiveness in extending the lives of animals.
In fact, the United States' Food and Drug Administration has also given its go-ahead to test the drug, originally conceived as a medication to cure diabetes, on human beings. Should the human testing of the drug turn out successful, a 70-year-old person taking the drug will be in a healthy medical state comparable to that of a 50-year-old.
Ageing expert Professor Gordon Lithgow, of the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing in California, who is one of the study advisers, said metformin is nothing short of "revolutionary."
"If you target an ageing process and you slow down ageing then you slow down all the diseases and pathology of ageing as well... That's never happened before," Lithgow told The New Zealand Herald.
"I have been doing research into ageing for 25 years and the idea that we would be talking about a clinical trial in humans for an anti-ageing drug would have been thought inconceivable," he added.
Lithgow further said that this drug can define the future of science.
"There is every reason to believe it's possible. The future is taking the biology that we've now developed and applying it to humans," the professor said.
