Do you want to live longer? Diabetes drug Metformin may hold the secret to longevity!

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Metformin, is a drug commonly used for the treatment of the diabetes disease, may just hold the secret to longevity as scientists found that the medication has the ability to slow down the ageing process. If proposed trial in humans could prove to be a success, then we could be looking into an extended lifespan of up to 120 years old.

The diabetes medication has already proven its efficacy in terms of its anti-ageing properties among animals, and testing on humans was already given a green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and will get under way in 2016, according to The Telegraph.

These breakthrough findings could pave the way for not just extending the life of humans, but also in making the quality of life, particularly in the health aspect, improve even to those who are already well into their 100s. This could also lead to a new age where widespread and life-threatening diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's could be just a thing of the past.

"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 revolutionary. That's never happened before," according to Professor Gordon Lithgow of the Buck Institute for Research on Ageing in California. Lithgow is a Scottish ageing expert who is also one of the study advisors.

He added that he still cannot believe that we are now in that stage where an actual trial among humans will be done in order to slow down ageing. This is something he never thought possible even after doing research about ageing for a long time.

"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 though inconceivable," he said.

"But 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. 20 years ago ageing was a biological mystery. Now we are starting to understand what is going on."

According to Fox News, Metformin is a common pill used by diabetic patients and only costs less than a dollar to manufacture. The drug was first tested on roundworms by Belgian scientists and because the results were encouraging, they are now looking into the next best thing—try it among humans.