Ozempic and Mounjaro Might Be Aging You Backwards, According to the Companies Selling Them

Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk both presented new findings over the weekend at a Boston aging-research conference suggesting their blockbuster weight-loss drugs may slow biological aging, not just body weight. Novo Nordisk's study of semaglutide, the compound behind Ozempic and Wegovy, used "proteomic clocks" on roughly 10,000 patients and found an estimated two-to-three-year gap in biological age versus placebo, with the largest effect showing up in heart-related proteins.

Lilly's smaller study used "epigenetic clocks," which track accumulated DNA changes, on patients taking tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro and Zepbound. Kevin Duffin, Lilly's vice president for aging research, described the slowdown as meaningful but stopped short of calling it a reversal of aging. Outside scientists quoted on the findings called the data promising but not conclusive, noting the benefits look clearer in people who already have obesity or related disease than in otherwise healthy people, and that the drugs still carry real side effects, including muscle loss.

Both companies have obvious incentive to find a reason beyond weight loss to justify long-term use of drugs that already dominate a market worth tens of billions of dollars, so a federally funded study of semaglutide in healthy adults over 60 is now underway to test the anti-aging claim without a drugmaker's thumb on the scale.

Source: MIT Technology Review

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →