Metformin has been used for many years to help people with type 2 diabetes lower their blood sugar.
It is one of the most common medicines in the world because it is inexpensive, widely available, and has a strong safety record.
Now researchers believe this familiar drug may have another important benefit. It could help older adults protect their muscles and recover better after illness, injury, or surgery.
As people grow older, they naturally lose muscle strength. Even a few days of staying in bed after an operation or serious illness can cause muscles to become weaker. This loss of strength can make everyday tasks more difficult, increase the risk of falls, and slow recovery. Finding simple ways to protect muscles has become an important goal for doctors.
A research team at the University of Utah Health wanted to see whether metformin could help. The scientists were led by Dr. Micah Drummond and focused on special cells known as senescent cells. These cells are often described as ‘zombie’ cells because they stop working properly but do not disappear from the body.
In younger people, these cells can play a useful role in healing after an injury. However, in older adults they often remain for too long and release substances that cause ongoing inflammation. This inflammation can lead to scar tissue inside muscles, making them weaker and slowing recovery.
The researchers believed metformin might calm these harmful cells. If that happened, muscles could lose less strength during periods of inactivity and recover more easily afterward.
To test the idea, the team recruited 20 healthy older adults. Before the experiment started, each volunteer had an MRI scan and a small muscle sample taken. Participants were then randomly assigned to receive either metformin or a placebo pill that contained no active medicine.
Everyone stayed on bed rest for five days, which is known to cause rapid muscle loss in older adults. After the bed rest, the volunteers had another MRI scan and muscle biopsy. They then returned to normal daily activity for one week before having a final muscle biopsy.
The results were encouraging. People who took metformin lost less muscle during bed rest than those taking the placebo. Their muscles also showed less scar tissue and fewer senescent cells, suggesting the drug reduced some of the harmful changes linked with aging and inactivity.
Lead author Jonathan Petrocelli said the long-term goal is to help older adults remain stronger and more independent as they age. The team is now studying whether combining metformin with the amino acid leucine could provide even greater benefits. Early animal studies suggest the combination may work well, although more research in people is still needed.
Dr. Drummond said metformin is affordable, effective, and generally very safe, making it an attractive option to study further.
Although this was a small early trial and larger studies are still needed before the treatment becomes routine, the findings offer hope that an existing medicine could one day help older adults recover faster after surgery, illness, or extended bed rest. The research was published in the journal Aging Cell.
If you care about diabetes, please read studies about 5 vitamins that may prevent complication in diabetes, and how to manage high blood pressure and diabetes with healthy foods.
For more health information, please see recent studies about vitamin D and type2 diabetes, and to people with type 2 diabetes, some fruits are better than others.
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