The popular weight-loss jabs Wegovy and Mounjaro might be doing more than just helping people shed the pounds – they could also be slowing the ageing process, a study found.
In mice that were a healthy weight to start with, Wegovy made them live 12 per cent longer – equivalent to a person living until 93 instead of 83.
The findings are leading some to suggest that these injections could one day be used as anti-ageing drugs by everyone – regardless of weight.
But could the fountain of youth really be under our noses, or is this yet another anti-ageing “breakthrough” that’s too good to be true?
Over two million people in Britain are thought to be taking weight-loss medication since their UK launch a few years ago – Wegovy in 2023 and Mounjaro the following year. The medicines work by mimicking hormones normally released after eating, making people fuller and blunting their appetite.
Reductions in inflammation, DNA damage
The drugs are supposed to be taken only by people over a certain weight. And research has so far mainly been in people or animals that are either overweight or have health conditions like heart or liver disease.
But in the new study, researchers gave injections of semaglutide – the same drug as in Wegovy – to female mice that were both healthy and a normal weight. Treatment was started when the animals were 20 months old, the equivalent of 60 years in humans.
As expected, the treated mice ate less food and ended up 19 per cent lighter than mice given placebo injections.
But the researchers found something more significant: the mice on Wegovy lived for about 27 months – three months longer than those in the control group.
The mice were also subjected to tests designed to probe how their cells and tissues were functioning.
The effects of Wegovy were consistent with it having a true anti-ageing effect, including reductions in inflammation, DNA damage and a process called cell senescence.
Senescence is when individual cells within an organ stop multiplying to regenerate tissues – as happens when we are younger – but instead enter a dormant state and release harmful chemicals. Other experimental drugs that target senescence are being investigated as a new class of anti-ageing drugs.
“We can potentially use this drug to slow down the ageing process and make healthy individuals live longer,” said Professor Danica Chen, a biologist at University of California, Berkeley, who led the study.
Radical anti-ageing strategy
Chen began the study hoping to find out if Wegovy could achieve similar results to a different radical anti-ageing strategy called calorie restriction.
This is when people go on a permanent lower-calorie diet – for women that might be about 1,500 calories a day instead of the usual 2,000 – not for weight loss but in the hope it will make them live longer.
Calorie restriction has been found to work at extending lifespan in many small animals – from two to three weeks in tiny worms, for instance. The theory is that when energy is scarce, the body prioritises repair and regeneration processes.
Some people manage to follow calorie restriction long term, but it is a challenging lifestyle to maintain.
As Wegovy suppresses appetite, it could be the key to achieving calorie restriction in an easier way, said Chen.
The bad news
But before we assume weight-loss jabs really are the first anti-ageing drugs, there are reasons for caution.
Even before the arrival of weight-loss drugs, anti-ageing researchers had some reservations about calorie restriction. While studies in small animals like worms and flies yielded impressive effects, when the strategy is tried in monkeys, one study found a much smaller benefit and another none.
Just because an anti-ageing strategy works in mice, that doesn’t mean it will work in people, said Dr Saul Newman, a longevity researcher at the University of Oxford who has a book coming out called Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science.
What’s more, even when weight-loss jabs are used in their intended target – on people who are overweight – they are no panacea. They cause mild side effects like nausea and diarrhoea in most people, especially when they start off or the dose is increased. Some find these so unpleasant they stop the jabs.
The drugs can also cause rare but more serious side effects, like pancreatitis and gall stones. Anyone at risk of these conditions may not be able to use them.
The study only looked at Wegovy injections, so we can’t assume the results would be the same with the medicine in pill form, or Mounjaro, which mimics two gut hormones as opposed to Wegovy’s one.
Not to mention the fact that the research was only carried out in female mice – so, bad luck for any men wanting the secret to longevity.
“We know that there are significant biological differences in tissues between mice and humans, such as our fat tissue, and between male and females,” said Dr Laura Sinclair, healthcare lecturer at the University of Exeter.
More research is needed to establish whether weight-loss drugs could work for anti-ageing, she said.
Despite the caveats, the results are making obesity and longevity researchers sit up – but it is probably too soon to get excited yet.
And that’s probably fortunate, because for now, weight-loss drugs are priced out of reach for most people, at £200 to £300 a month – although the cost is likely to plunge dramatically within the next decade, once the patent expires on Wegovy.
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