September 15, 2026

GLP-1 drug slows aging in mice

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A study in mice shows a GLP-1 drug, and decreasing total food intake without causing malnutrition, can slow the aging clock. 

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Getting older comes with increased risk of disease and disability. Researchers know that restricting calories—decreasing total food intake without causing malnutrition—slows the aging process and extends lifespan across many species. It also delays the onset and prevalence of a variety of age-related conditions like cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. 

GLP-1 drugs help treat conditions like obesity and type 2 diabetes by blocking hunger signals and helping people feel full longer. GLP-1 stands for glucagon-like-peptide-1, a hormone made in the small intestine. It helps regulate blood sugar and lowers appetite. GLP-1 drugs mimic GLP-1 but have longer-lasting effects. 

Researchers have noticed other benefits from taking GLP-1 drugs. These include reduced risks of cardiovascular, kidney, liver, and neurodegenerative diseases. But not all of these effects can be explained by weight loss or better blood sugar control alone.  

An NIH-funded research team led by Dr. Danica Chen at the University of California, Berkeley wondered if GLP-1 drugs, like calorie restriction, might affect the aging process itself. To find out, they compared the effects of GLP-1 drugs and calorie restriction on aging in mice. Results of the study were published in Nature on September 2, 2026. 

The researchers treated 20-month-old female mice with the GLP-1 drug semaglutide daily for three months. Compared with a control group, the treated mice were better at various functions that decline with age. These included muscular and cognitive function, coordination, balance, and endurance. Semaglutide also reversed age-related changes in the activities of various genes. 

Additionally, the team noticed a lifespan benefit. They treated a group of mice daily with semaglutide from 20 months old until death, and they lived about 100 days longer than untreated mice. 

Next, the scientists compared semaglutide with calorie restriction. They thought this method would help determine if the lifespan-extending benefits of semaglutide they saw in the first experiment were due only to the mice eating fewer calories. One group of 20-month-old female mice was treated with semaglutide for five months. Another group ate a 24% calorie-restricted diet for five months.  

The researchers found calorie restriction and semaglutide prevented declines in physiological functions linked with aging in untreated mice. Only semaglutide improved functions, specifically exploratory behavior, spatial memory, and glucose tolerance.  

Energy usage also differed between the treatment groups. Even though both groups ate the same number of calories, the calorie-restricted group’s daytime energy usage slowed down while the GLP-1 group’s was unchanged.  

The results suggest that GLP-1 drugs, like calorie restriction, can slow aging and extend lifespan in mice. But the mechanism by which they do so differs from that of calorie restriction.  

“Most chronic diseases are deeply rooted in the aging process,” says Dr. Rafael de Cabo, a senior investigator at the NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA). “If GLP-1 agonists do indeed slow it down, then a wide range of clinical benefits is exactly what you’d expect to see.” 

But he added that more research is needed to confirm these findings before drawing firm conclusions. Mice make the same GLP-1 receptor that semaglutide targets, but results in mice do not always translate directly to humans. Further study will be needed before these findings can be applied to humans. 

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References

Late-life semaglutide treatment slows ageing and extends lifespan in female mice.  Feng Y, Barthez M, Wang Y, Chen Y, Qiu H, Wang CL, Heydari K, Delcroix M, Rasmussen LJ, Bohr VA, Chen D. Nature. 2026 Sep 2. doi: 10.1038/s41586-026-10940-7. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 42686906.

Funding

NIH’s National Institute on Aging (NIA); National Institute of Food and Agriculture.