GLP-1 drugs may slow biological aging, study finds

Oakland, Calif. - At least one in 10 Americans is now on a GLP-1 weight loss drug, medications already credited with helping people lose weight and reduce their risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Now, researchers at UC San Diego say the drugs may also help slow the aging process. The study examined the drug's effects in people living with HIV, a population increasingly at risk for chronic disease and inflammation as they age.

The study measured what researchers call biological age, distinct from chronological age, using markers known as epigenetic clocks.

"There are marks on our DNA. We're born with our DNA, but over our lifetimes, we develop alterations to the DNA that indicate how fast we are aging," said Dr. Suneil Koliwad, chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism at UCSF Health about the study. 

He said investigators compared how quickly people aged, based on those markers, after 32 weeks of taking semaglutide versus those who did not take the drug.

Koliwad addressed the seeming contradiction between the drug's known side effects, including muscle mass and bone density loss, and its potential anti-aging effects.

"Individuals who lose weight with Ozempic actually lose more fat mass than they lose lean mass," Koliwad said. He said doctors still recommend resistance training and adequate protein intake to preserve lean mass, but that lean mass loss was not treated as a significant marker of aging in the study.

"What the study found was that, indeed, across all of these different epigenetic clocks that they tested, the people who took semaglutide had between a two year and a seven year reduction in their advancing biological age versus the people who didn't take the medicine," Koliwad said.

Asked whether the findings support wider use of GLP-1 drugs for longevity rather than only for weight loss or diabetes management, Koliwad said the pool of potential beneficiaries is already growing.

"The number of people who benefit from these medicines is expanding, because it now includes people who have obesity who need it for weight loss, and also people who don't necessarily have obesity but might have a number of other conditions that are tied to metabolic ill health or aspects of unhealthy aging, namely those that are linked to inflammation," Koliwad said.

Koliwad said the study's takeaway is that the drugs' known ability to reduce inflammation may be responsible for slowing aging markers, a finding that could broaden who is considered a good candidate for treatment.

"There are other medicines on the heels of semaglutide that are already FDA approved and will be FDA approved that may exert even more powerful effects in these categories, including potentially against aging that are yet to be approved, but will be very soon," Koliwad said.