Common blood pressure medication extends lifespan and slows aging in animals: ScienceAlert

The high blood pressure drug rilmenidine has been shown to slow aging in worms, an effect that could theoretically help us humans live longer and stay healthier as we age.

Previous research has shown that rilmenidine mimics the effects of calorie restriction at the cellular level. Reducing available energy while maintaining nutrition in the body has increased lifespan in several animal models.

Whether this is applicable to human biology or poses a potential risk to our health is a topic currently being debated. Finding ways to achieve the same benefits without the costs of extreme calorie restriction could lead to new ways to improve health in old age.

In a 2023 study, young and old Caenorhabditis elegans As the scientists hoped, the worms treated with the drug – normally used to treat high blood pressure – lived longer and had higher levels of a number of health markers than when they were calorie-restricted.

“For the first time, we have shown in animals that rilmenidine can extend lifespan,” said molecular biogerontologist João Pedro Magalhães of the University of Birmingham in the UK.

“We now want to investigate whether rilmenidine is also suitable for other clinical applications.”

The C.elegans Worm is a popular object of study because many of its genes have similarities to our genomes. However, despite these similarities, it is still a fairly distant relative of humans.

Further testing showed that gene activity associated with calorie restriction was observed in kidney and liver tissue from mice treated with rilmenidine. In other words, some of the changes that calorie restriction causes in animals and that are thought to confer certain health benefits also occur in a high blood pressure drug that many people already take.

Another discovery was that a biological signaling receptor called Nish-1 was crucial to rilmenidine's effectiveness. This particular chemical structure could be targeted in future attempts to extend lifespan and slow the aging process.

“We found that the life-extending effects of rilmenidine were abolished when Nish-1 was removed,” the researchers explained in their article. “Crucially, rescuing the Nish-1 receptor restored the life-extension after rilmenidine treatment.”

Low-calorie diets are difficult to maintain and come with a number of side effects, such as hair loss, dizziness and brittle bones. It is still too early, but it is believed that this high blood pressure drug could offer the same benefits as a low-calorie diet, but with less stress on the body.

What makes rilmenidine a promising candidate as an anti-aging drug is the fact that it can be taken orally, is already widely prescribed, and its side effects are rare and relatively mild (these include heart palpitations, insomnia, and drowsiness in some cases).

There is still a long way to go to find out whether rilmenidine would work as an anti-aging drug for humans, but the early signs from these worm and mouse tests are promising. We now know a lot more about what rilmenidine can do and how it works.

“Given the ageing world population, the benefits of delaying ageing, even slightly, are enormous,” said Magalhães.

The study was published in Ageing cell.

An earlier version of this article was published in January 2023.