Fountain of Youth? Drug Trial Has Seniors Scrambling to Prove They’re Worthy
Drug study brings out the competition; 100 push-ups a day!
Bill Thygerson is one of many older Americans eager to participate in a new study that seeks to slow aging. PHOTO: BOB MILLER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
What if there were a way to stave off the creaks and calamities of old age? Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is working on it.
With word leaking out, seniors from all over the globe have been hounding Dr. Barzilai and his colleagues to get in on the action—with many writing to prove their worthiness. Never mind that formal patient recruitment is still perhaps a year away.
Vicki Hayes
One 71-year-old sent a photo of himself along with a note: “still do 100 push ups every day!” A retired engineer disclosed his schedule: “Completing 2 crosswords a day; walking for 30-45 minutes daily; playing the piano for one hour a day; consuming 1000 mg of turmeric.”
“I constantly worry, how long will I be able to work; will I ever be able to retire and will I be able to care for myself when I’m older?” another prospective volunteer wrote.
“All humankind is waiting and watching,” wrote a 76-year-old who teaches “Introduction to Twitter” at a senior center in Las Vegas.
Would-be participants—from Cherry Hill, N.J., the Four Corners area of New Mexico, the Netherlands and beyond—have inundated Dr. Barzilai with calls and letters. Other researchers in the project have been swamped as well.
Behind the mania is a widely used, inexpensive generic pill for Type 2 diabetes called metformin. Scientists are planning a clinical trial to see if the drug can delay or prevent some of the most devastating diseases of advanced age, from heart ailments to cognitive decline to cancer. To test the pill, gerontologists at 14 aging centers around the U.S. will follow 3,000 seniors for six years. Half the seniors involved would get the drug, while the others would receive a placebo.
“Clearly we have tapped into something that is fundamental to humanity,” said S. Jay Olshansky, a professor at the school of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago who is also involved in the project.
Dr. Olshanksy hasn’t seen this kind of patient interest in a medical study. “You are never contacted by the public, ever,” he said.
Medical researchers often practically have to beg for volunteers, and sometimes offer them big money. A plea for subjects for a National Institute on Aging-funded sleep study, for instance, makes participation sound fun. “37-day Sleep Research Study! Needs Healthy Participants Ages 55-70!” Participants “receive up to $10,125,” the notice says.
The metformin study has a more natural appeal, acknowledges Dr. Olshansky. “We’re talking about the most valuable commodity on earth: life itself.”
Senior sleuths have dug up his cellphone number and called it repeatedly. “What’s your story?” the doctor asked a California man who kept phoning. The caller, a 70-year-old entrepreneur, told the doctor he is enjoying life and doesn’t want it to end.
A few people said they craved significant life extensions—complete with retirement benefits. “The thought of living on until 120 years old fills me with great excitement, and also the thought of drawing my pensions until then would be an amazing gift,” a 71-year-old British man wrote.
Vicki Hayes, 61, hopes that a healthy lifestyle can help her avoid medical problems as she ages.
A photo of Ms. Hayes as a college student.
PHOTOS: COLBY KATZ FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL;
Others seem motivated by their dread of an emotionally and financially challenging decline. “It’s not so much a fear of dying, it’s a fear of living in pain and agony and being a burden to everyone else and my wife and so forth,” said Bill Thygerson, 70, a retired missile-systems engineer.
Many who raised hands, including Mr. Thygerson, of Huntsville, Ala., already live carefully. He has cut way down on sugar and red meat. He’s a gym regular. A few years ago, he got back to his college weight. (“I did have three vegan cupcakes for my daughter’s birthday,” he confessed.)
While life expectancy has increased dramatically in the last century, aging also boosts one’s chance of developing cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease and more.
Gerontologists’ interest in metformin dovetails with research by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, which is also testing ways to postpone or prevent debilitating and costly conditions. The idea behind the effort is to target pathways in the body, at the molecular level, that when defective can trigger chronic disease or death, said Rafael de Cabo, chief of the agency’s Translational Gerontology Branch.
A photo of Mr. Thygerson, a 70-year-old retired missile-systems engineer, recalls his youthful days. PHOTO: BOB MILLER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
In the past dozen years, his lab and others identified multiple compounds, including metformin, that affect these pathways and have led to a healthier old age, and in some cases longer life, in mice.
Researchers consider metformin the best choice of the bunch to try first on humans because of its history of causing little to no side effects.
Also encouraging the researchers: A large British study, published in 2014, reported that older diabetics on metformin on average lived longer than their healthier peers.
The team planning the U.S. study is working to raise about $64 million. No pharmaceutical company is involved, and none of the doctors have a financial stake in the pill.
“I just think we need to think out of the box,” said Vicki Hayes, a 61-year-old retired school principal in Wilmington, N.C., who asked to volunteer for the clinical trial. She may be out of luck: researchers are planning to select subjects between the ages of 65 and 79.
Some prospective participants have already had brushes with an illness. “You don’t think about mortality until something like that hits you straight in the face,” Randolph von Gans, of Marbella, Spain, said by phone. The 72-year-old semi-retiree relishes the outdoors and socializing, and recalled feeling somewhat “shattered” during a setback from a blocked coronary artery.
Even Dr. Olshansky’s older sister is nudging him to get her into the study. (He instructed her to write a letter, same as the other wannabes.)
The sister, 64-year-old Arlene Schultz, did just that. She shared her concerns during a phone call, during which she was simultaneously walking on a treadmill.
“I don’t want to look old. I don’t want to feel old,” said Ms. Schultz, a retired skin care technician who lives in Farmington Hills, Mich. “I’m trying my darndest to fight it.”
Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com
