A randomized human trial shows one drug delays several age-related diseases at once

The Targeting Aging with Metformin trial and others like it test whether one cheap drug can delay the arrival of heart disease, cancer, dementia, and death taken together in older adults. A positive result is the first proof in humans that aging can be slowed as a whole rather than one disease at a time.

The test: what counts as it having happened

A randomized, placebo-controlled trial of at least a thousand adults aged sixty-five or over reports a statistically significant delay in its primary combined measure, fixed before the trial began, of several age-related diseases or death (a pre-registered composite endpoint), where the composite spans at least two organ systems (for example heart disease, cancer, dementia), published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Settled by: The trial's peer-reviewed primary publication and its pre-registration record

The odds, by how long I live

baselineto 2071 ± 8	moderateto 2080	strongto 2095	radicalto 2136	openno deadline
70%	75%	80%	90%	90%

Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of September 8th, 2026.

Why these numbers: The metformin trial alone is perhaps two in five to report positive around 2031, but a dozen other composite trials over the following decades make at least one success likely.

What this one is worth

Nothing. The headline number does not rest on this step at any remove, so however it turns out, the chance that I live and work off Earth does not change. That is not a judgement that it does not matter. It is what the tree says: this step feeds a tier above the one the headline asks about, or sits beside the equation rather than in it.

What the ledger says about this step

• Forty-one steps had their criteria tightened so that two readers would agree when each has happened, with no number moved for that alone 2026-09-20 The tree itself changed

The last 3 checks

Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.

• 2026-11-01 Nothing new

  No composite-endpoint aging trial has reported; TAME is still enrolling or funding-constrained with results not expected before 2027-2028.

• 2026-10-04 Nothing new

  No qualifying trial reported results; TAME is still not fully funded or reported, with no efficacy results as of 2026.

• 2026-09-19 No change

  AFAR, the TAME trial's own sponsor, is still fundraising to launch the trial as of August 29th, 2026 and has not completed enrollment or published results. Several low-quality websites circulated an unverified claim of a positive interim result and an unrelated Eli Lilly endpoint claim; neither is corroborated by AFAR, ClinicalTrials.gov, or a primary source, so it is disregarded.

  source 1source 2

Revisions

Date	Field	From	To	Why
2026-09-19	resolution	any pre-registered composite of several age-related diseases or death, in older adults	the pre-registered primary composite must span at least two organ systems, in adults aged sixty-five or over	Step 27 outside-model review, item 30 (docs/reviews/2026-09-19-rulings.md): a purely cardiovascular composite could improve because one disease improved; the metformin trial, the node's own example, still qualifies. Decided September 19th, 2026.

Notes

Checked twice on September 8th, 2026: no primary results publication for the Targeting Aging with Metformin trial (about 3,000 adults aged 65 to 79, four years, composite of heart disease, cancer, dementia, and death) was found in journal, registry, or sponsor sources; aggregator sites claiming a positive result are unconfirmed. Stays open. Re-check at the first quarterly scan.

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Think this estimate is wrong? Here's how to tell me, and what happens next. The record itself is data/W-window.toml in the public repository.