My father lived to be 88, would have lived to 98 (I think0 BUT FOR HIS WEAKNESS RE MANGOES. For men, metformin AND acarbose synergestically work better than each other, while both improve healthy life. Acarbose fails longevity in women. Both benefit from rapamycin, though toxic in long use. As a diabetic on both, I expect to live 15 years beyond my undiabetic life! 98 to 110 with current interventions. NMN targets Sirtuin, Metformin targets AMPk while rapamycin target mTOR pathway.
Researchers have demonstrated that acarbose, a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes, extends life in mice. This should probably be taken as speculative until more studies are run, as another treatment for type 2 diabetes, metformin, has erratic results on life span in rodent studies. Like metformin, the mechanism of action for acarbose involves influencing glucose metabolism, though in a completely different way.
- Studies of this nature take place because the high costs of regulation in medical development, along with the reluctance of regulators to approve anything new these days, make it more cost-effective to find marginal new uses for existing drugs than to go out and develop new therapies or new classes of therapies. It is unfortunate that so much research time is diverted into channels that cannot result in radical breakthroughs or great advances.
The present meta-analysis aimed to evaluate metformin combined with acarbose compared with monotherapy with either of the two drugs for type 2 diabetes (T2DM). Relevant trials were retrieved through searching PubMed, Embase, Cochrane library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang and Chongqing VIP information network databases. Heterogeneous and homogeneous data were statistically combined using a random- and fixed-effects model, respectively. For dichotomous and continuous data, the merged effect size was presented as the risk ratio (RR) and weighted mean differences (WMD), respectively, with 95% confidence interval (CI). All included studies were divided into subgroups. A Funnel plot was used to detect publication bias. Review Manager 5.2 software was applied to perform the statistical analyses. Meta-analysis revealed that compared with metformin monotherapy, combined therapy was significantly more efficacious regarding indexes including the total effective rate, fasting blood glucose (FBG), blood glucose levels at two post-prandial hours (2HPG) and hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c). Similarly, combined therapy showed advantages on indexes including FBG, 2HPG and HbA1c over acarbose therapy after 4 months of treatment. In conclusion, the findings of the present meta-analysis suggested that combined therapy of metformin and acarbose appears to be more efficacious than metformin or acarbose monotherapy.
Recognizing that aging can be targeted, the NIH developed the NIA Interventions Testing Program (ITP). The ITP tests diets, drugs, or other interventions to see if they prevent disease and extend lifespan in genetically heterogeneous (outbred) mice (http://www.nia.nih.gov/research/dab/interventions-testing-program-itp). This program is conducted at multiple centers in order to control for laboratory-specific environmental differences, and testing is done in both male and female animals (Miller et al., 2007; Nadon et al., 2008). Major findings of the ITP include that nordihydroguaiaretic acid and aspirin each increase lifespan of male mice (Strong et al., 2008) and acarbose and 17-α-Estradiol extend mouse lifespan preferentially in males (Harrison et al., 2014). Studies of rapamycin (an mTOR inhibitor) have established the most compelling evidence for targeting aging. When rapamycin is administered late in life, it extends lifespan (Harrison et al., 2009; Miller et al., 2011), slows aging in a dose-dependent manner, shows differential effects by sex (Wilkinson et al., 2012), and is synergistic with metformin.
Acarbose "alpha-glucosidase inhibitors" (why it works), 17-α-estradiol, and nordihydroguaiaretic acid (metformin relative) extend mouse lifespan preferentially in males. 17-α-estradiol is feminine, why (I think) human women live longer and it does not impact women mice.
