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Semaglutide extended the median lifespan of old female mice by nearly 100 days in an NIH-funded study
Old female mice given semaglutide until the end of life had a median lifespan nearly 100 days longer than untreated mice, the National Institutes of Health said on September 2, 2026.
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The animals were 20-month-old female mice. Researchers led by Danica Chen at the University of California, Berkeley gave them semaglutide, the drug in Ozempic and Wegovy, for three months. Against a control group, the treated mice showed better muscle and cognitive function, and gene readings showed less of the inflammation and lost regenerative capacity that come with normal aging. A second group stayed on the drug until the end of life, and that is where the lifespan figure comes from. The work was published in Nature on September 2, 2026.
Semaglutide makes animals eat less, so a lifespan gain could be nothing more than eating less. Over five months the authors set the drug against a diet cut by 24 percent, matched to what the treated mice ate. Most measurements tracked each other. Three did not: the semaglutide mice beat their own starting scores on exploratory behavior, spatial memory and blood-sugar control. Metabolic rate fell in the calorie-restricted animals and stayed about level in the treated ones. The gap suggests the drug is doing something a smaller dinner does not.
The lifespan gain came from treatment that ran to the end of life, in female mice, in a laboratory. The NIH release says the findings do not imply that similar results could be achieved immediately in humans, and it names the clinical work that would have to come first, such as a post-hoc analysis of the SLIM LIVER trial. Anyone selling you a GLP-1 on this study is ahead of the evidence.
If a GLP-1 slows aging itself rather than treating one disease at a time, a wide range of clinical benefits is what you would expect to see. Rafael de Cabo of the National Institute on Aging, who wrote the commentary that ran with the paper, makes that argument in the release.
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The source
“While these findings may guide future research, they do not imply that similar results could be achieved immediately in humans.”
GLP-1 treatment late in life extends lifespan in animal model, National Institutes of Health, September 2, 2026. Accessed September 17, 2026.
