U.S. research team "similar to the effect of calorie restriction... additional improvement in navigation, memory, and blood sugar"
(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Jooyoung Lee = Research results have shown that glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA, semaglutide), which is used to treat obesity and type 2 diabetes, slows aging-related functional decline and increases lifespan in mice.
Professor Danika Chen's team at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) reported in the scientific journal Nature on the 3rd that when semaglutide was administered to old female mice, physiological and cognitive functions were improved, several characteristics of aging were alleviated, and lifespan was found to be 92 days longer than the control group.
The research team said that although this appears to be a similar effect to calorie restriction, which has been confirmed to be associated with health and lifespan extension in several studies, GLP-1 drugs also showed effects that cannot be explained by reducing calorie intake alone, and that long-term clinical studies are needed to confirm whether they have a similar effect on human aging and lifespan.
Calorie restriction, which reduces calorie intake within a range that does not cause malnutrition, is known to slow aging and extend lifespan, along with improving physiological function and alleviating metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases in several species.
Semaglutide, an ingredient in Ozempic and WeGobee, is widely used as an effective treatment for type 2 diabetes and obesity by reducing food intake.
The research team pointed out that the GLP-1 class of drugs not only lowers blood sugar levels and reduces weight, but also has positive effects on various bodily functions, but little is known about why these various effects occur.
The research team raised 20-month-old female mice into a semaglutide-administered group, a control group, and a calorie-restricted group. They investigated the effects of semaglutide on the lifespan and physical function of aging mice, and compared the results with the calorie-restricted group.
As a result, the semaglutide-administered group had improved physiological and cognitive functions and alleviated several characteristics of aging, and the median lifespan of mice continuously administered semaglutide was 834 days, which was 92 days, or approximately 12.4%, longer than the control group (742 days).
In addition, in order to confirm whether the effect of semaglutide was simply due to a decrease in food intake, a comparison was made with the calorie-restricted group in which food intake was reduced by 24%. As a result, the reduction in body weight and body fat was similar, but behavioral and metabolic changes due to fasting that were observed in the calorie-restricted group were not observed in the semaglutide-administered group.
In terms of function, both groups showed similar effects, such as alleviating aging-related decline in exercise ability and muscle function, but the semaglutide treatment group showed improvement in navigation behavior, spatial memory, and blood sugar control beyond the functional level at the start of treatment.
In addition, in the semaglutide administration group, aging-related biological changes were confirmed to be alleviated, including alleviation of bone marrow hematopoietic stem cell aging, improvement in per-cell regeneration capacity, increase in neural stem cell activity and neuron formation in the dentate gyrus of the brain and hippocampus, and reduction in inflammation and cellular aging.
Liver gene expression analysis showed that semaglutide caused changes in the direction of lowering the activity of genes related to inflammation and lipid metabolism and increasing adaptive immune response, insulin response, and protein homeostasis.
The research team explained that in the semaglutide administration group, various effects that were difficult to explain by simply reducing food intake were confirmed, and that this shows the possibility that semaglutide affects aging in a way that cannot be explained by simply reducing calorie intake.
He went on to say that calorie restriction has been studied as a way to slow aging and extend lifespan by reducing calorie intake, but it is difficult to practice for a long period of time, and that this study suggests the possibility of semaglutide being used as a drug that mimics the benefits of calorie restriction.
Dr. Chen said, "Identifying the biological pathway through which GLP-1 drugs act and the specific benefits that result from that pathway is an important direction for research on lifespan extension interventions," and added, "These results may provide important guidance for future research."
He added, “Future clinical studies will also be able to examine the benefits of semaglutide in healthy elderly people,” adding, “Through this, the scope of use of GLP-1 drugs will be greatly expanded.”
◆ Source: Nature, Danica Chen et al., ‘Late-life semaglutide treatment slows aging and extends lifespan in female mice’, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10940-7
