Among the people taking metformin—and leading the charge to evaluate its long-term effects on aging in humans—is Nir Barzilai, the Israeli American physician and geneticist who, along with his colleagues at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, discovered several longevity gene variants in the insulin-like growth hormone receptor that controls FOXO3, the cholesterol gene CETP, and the sirtuin SIRT6, all of which seem to help ensure that some lucky people with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry remain healthy beyond 100.
