We’re still figuring out the side effects of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs

This week my colleague Antonio Regalado had an interesting update on GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. According to research presented at an aging meeting in Boston, these drugs seem to affect at least some measures of biological age.

Overweight and diabetic people who take GLP-1s have a biological age around two to three years younger than similar individuals who take a placebo, according to findings from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk, two pharmaceutical companies that make the drugs.

I’ve heard people in the aging field describe GLP-1s as longevity drugs for a while now (even if they only benefit people who are overweight or diabetic in the first place). This latest announcement comes after we’ve seen a raft of other benefits associated with taking these drugs. But there are also some weird side effects.

So far, GLP-1 agonist drugs—which repress hunger—have been approved for treating diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and obesity, and they can also be prescribed for some people who are …