A Common Diabetes Drug May Boost Women’s Chances of Reaching 90, And Scientists Think They Know Why

Now and then, a scientific study appears that forces you to rethink something familiar. For me, that was this new research on metformin, a drug millions of people have taken for decades to manage type 2 diabetes.

I’ve always thought of it as a reliable, unglamorous workhorse of modern medicine. But this latest study suggests it may be doing far more than controlling blood sugar.

It may actually be helping women live longer, in some cases increasing the odds of reaching age 90 by almost a third.

This isn’t the kind of dramatic promise you see splashed across magazine covers. It’s cautious, data-driven, and filled with caveats, but the signal coming from the research is strong enough that scientists are paying close attention.

A Surprising Clue Hidden in a Long-Term Women’s Health Study

The study’s foundation comes from the massive, long-running database of postmenopausal women in the US. From it, researchers in the US and Germany pulled records of 438 women with type 2 diabetes. Half were prescribed metformin; half received a different class of drugs known as sulfonylureas.

Even before diving into the results, what makes this dataset valuable is its timescale. Most clinical trials last months, occasionally a few years.

But these women were followed for 14 to 15 years on average, giving scientists something rare: a panoramic view of long-term health outcomes.

What the researchers found surprised even them. The women taking metformin had a 30 percent lower risk of dying before 90 compared to those taking sulfonylureas. As the team wrote:

“Metformin has been shown to target multiple pathways of aging and therefore has been postulated as a drug that may extend human longevity.”

To keep things consistent, the researchers used age 90 as the threshold for what they called “exceptional longevity.” It’s not immortality, but it’s a milestone only a minority of the population ever reaches.

Why Metformin Might Influence Longevity

Metformin is not new. It’s been around for over 60 years and is considered a gerotherapeutic, a drug that can slow certain biological aging processes rather than merely treating symptoms.

Earlier studies have shown that metformin may:

As someone who follows aging research closely, I’ve noticed metformin repeatedly showing up in studies that don’t seem directly connected to diabetes at all, long COVID risk reduction, slowed cognitive deterioration, and even potential effects on cancer pathways.

There’s clearly something deeper happening at the cellular level.

This new research doesn’t prove that metformin causes longer life; observational studies rarely can. But it reinforces a theory that’s been building for years: metformin doesn’t just manage glucose; it interacts with the body’s aging architecture.

A Study With Limitations, But Also Rare Strengths

It’s important to emphasize what this study isn’t. It’s not a randomized controlled trial (RCT).

Participants weren’t randomly assigned to metformin or sulfonylureas; they followed medical advice from their doctors. There was no placebo group. And with 438 women, the sample size isn’t huge.

Those limitations matter, and the researchers are the first to acknowledge them.

Still, this study has something that most RCTs cannot offer: time.

“A key advantage of our analysis was the long follow-up period after treatment initiation… which is not feasible in typical randomized controlled trials,” the authors note.

When you’re studying something as slow-moving and complex as human aging, a 15-year window is invaluable. In many ways, longevity research is like climate research: trends only reveal themselves over long stretches of observation.

The Geroscience Hypothesis, and Why This Study Matters

The deeper significance of this study ties into the growing field of geroscience, the idea that aging itself is a modifiable biological process. The theory suggests: If you slow biological aging,

Metformin has long been suspected to influence some of those underlying pathways. As the researchers wrote:

“The geroscience hypothesis posits that biological aging is malleable and that slowing biological aging may delay or prevent the onset of multiple age-related diseases.”

In other words, instead of trying to treat diabetes, cancer, heart disease, and cognitive decline separately, you may be able to slow down the shared biological machinery that drives all of them.

From my perspective, that’s what makes this study so intriguing. We’re not just talking about blood sugar control; we’re talking about a drug that might influence the body’s aging clock as a whole.

What Comes Next: Larger Trials and Bigger Questions

The researchers emphasize that RCTs are still needed to confirm any lifespan-extending effects. Those trials could come in the future, though they would need enormous time and funding, following thousands of individuals for decades.

Still, studies like this help justify that investment. They suggest there’s something meaningful to investigate.

As populations around the world continue to age rapidly, the need for safe, inexpensive interventions is growing. Metformin is cheap. It’s widely available.

And it has one of the safest long-term safety profiles in modern medicine. If it truly offers even modest longevity benefits, the implications for public health could be enormous.

For now, what this study offers is a strong signal, one that hints at the possibility of longer life for millions of women with type 2 diabetes.

And personally, I find it compelling that a drug so ordinary, so unassuming, might be quietly influencing human lifespan behind the scenes. Sometimes the biggest discoveries aren’t flashy; they’re hiding in plain sight, inside the pills people have been taking for decades.

The entire research is published in the Journal of Gerontology.