Venki Ramakrishnan On Anti-Ageing Supplement GLP-1 (image @eventsBL)

Kozhikode, Kerala: At the Kerala Literature Festival held at Kerala’s Calicut, structural biologist and former president of Royal Society clarified on the use of GLP-1 as an anti-ageing drug. According to Ramakrishnan, while GLP-1 is quite promising as an anti-ageing drug, there are other factors to be added.

He made the remarks while in conversation with Abraham Verghese in the session ‘Why We Die: The New Science of Ageing and the Quest for Immortality’ at KLF.

Explaining the uses of GLP-1, which is commonly takes as weightloss drugs, Ramakrishnan said GLP-1 is a class of drugs that belonged to Glucagone-like peptide 1. He said GLP-1 is given as weightloss drug and are described for people who are extremely obese.

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When people started to find that it had other benefits like treating inflammation, slowly the talk lead to the notion that the GLP-1 can potentially be used as an anti-ageing drug.

Ramakrishnan said that while it sounds promising, it might be too early to determine anything. He said long-term effect of the drug cannot be identified in order for it to be considered anti-ageing drugs.

He said if one have serious disease like cancer, they will take a very nasty treatment to kill the cancer off. “Because otherwise you will die…right? But if you could just take an anti-ageing drug in hope that you could live another ten years or so, then the equation is quite different”.

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He said if that is the case, the safety bar would be extremely high. “GLP-1 high has to reach that high bar in order to be considered as the anti-ageing drug”.

The Kerala Literature Festival, presented by DC Books continues until January 26, featuring a wide range of sessions, workshops, and cultural events at the Kozhikode beach.