Can Ibuprofen Help You Live Longer?

If you’re tempted to take a daily ibuprofen to extend your life because they’re cheap and readily available – don’t!

Advice from the National Health Service (NHS) UK

Highlights from the NHS review:

• Many news-outlets have reported that “taking ibuprofen every day could extend your life by up to 12 YEARS.” If you read these headlines and felt sceptical, you’d be right to do so.
• The news has been extrapolated to humans, based on research in yeast, microscopic worms and fruit flies
• The news has been extrapolated to humans, based on research in yeast, microscopic worms and fruit flies
• There is no guarantee that it will extend the lives of humans – or indeed other animals more complex than flies.
• Even if a chemical was to have an effect on mammals, it would be unlikely to be as great an effect as in the simpler organisms that have been tested.
• The results of the study themselves point to a more complicated story as organisms get more complex. While average lifespan was extended in all of the organisms, in male fruit flies (but not females) maximum lifespan was actually reduced with ibuprofen.

Please read the entire analysis here https://www.nhs.uk/news/medication/ibuprofen-unlikely-to-extend-life/

Aging is the greatest risk factor for many diseases, which together account for the majority of global deaths and healthcare costs. Here we show that the common drug ibuprofen increases the lifespan of yeast, worms and flies, indicative of conserved longevity effects. In budding yeast, an excellent model of cellular longevity mechanisms, ibuprofen’s pro-longevity action is independent of its known anti-inflammatory role. We show that the critical function of ibuprofen in longevity is to inhibit the uptake of aromatic amino acids, by destabilizing the high-affinity tryptophan permease. We further show that ibuprofen alters cell cycle progression. Mirroring the effects of ibuprofen, we found that most yeast long-lived mutants were also similarly affected in cell cycle progression. These findings identify a safe drug that extends the lifespan of divergent organisms and reveal fundamental cellular properties associated with longevity.

He, C., Tsuchiyama, S., Nguyen, Q., Plyusnina, E., Terrill, S., & Sahibzada, S. et al. (2014). Enhanced Longevity by Ibuprofen, Conserved in Multiple Species, Occurs in Yeast through Inhibition of Tryptophan Import. Plos Genetics, 10(12), e1004860. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004860