Ibuprofen, like aspirin, is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug used to treat pain and fever.

An over-the-counter painkiller could hold back ageing, research suggests. In laboratory tests, ibuprofen was found to extend the lives of worms and flies by the equivalent of about 12 years in human terms. They not only lived longer, but seemed to maintain their fitness and health.

Despite the big evolutionary gap between worms and people, scientists believe they have stumbled on a new aspect to ageing that could have major implications.

Lead researcher Michael Polymenis, from Texas A&M University in the US, said: “It is worth exploring further. This study was a proof of principle, to show that common, relatively-safe drugs in humans can extend the lifespan of very diverse organisms.

“It should therefore be possible to find others like ibuprofen with even better ability to extend life-span, with the aim of adding healthy years of life in people.”

Ibuprofen is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug used to treat pain and fever. It was deve-loped by Boots in the 1960s and became available over the counter around the world in the 1980s.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) includes the drug on its list of ‘essential medications’ needed in every basic health system.

Although it is considered relat-ively safe, high doses can have harmful side-effects that impact the gastrointestinal tract and liver.

Scientists exposed three model organisms – baker’s yeast, the lab worm Caenorhabditis elegans and the fruit fly – to ibuprofen. The doses used were broadly the equivalent of those taken by humans. The treatment added about 15 per cent to the lives of the different species, which in human terms amounts to an extra dozen or so years of life. It was also healthy living time. Both the treated flies and worms appeared healthier in old age than those left untreated, the scientists reported in the online journal Public Library of Science Genetics.

Co-author Chong He, from the Buck Institute for Age Research in California, US, said: “The treated worms thrashed much longer than would normally be expected. As they aged, they also swallowed food much faster than expected.”

A possible clue to the effect came when the scientists found that ibuprofen interfered with the ability of yeast cells to pick up tryptophan, an amino acid protein building block found in every organism.

Why blocking tryptophan might affect ageing is still unknown.

Another member of the team, Brian Kennedy, also from the Buck Institute, said: “Not only did all the species live longer, but the treated flies and worms appeared to be more healthy. Ibuprofen impacts a process not yet implicated in ageing, giving us a new way to study and understand ageing.

He added: “Our institute is interested in finding out why people get sick when they get old.

“By understanding those pro-cesses, we can intervene and find ways to extend human health-span, keeping people healthier longer and slowing down ageing. That’s our ultimate goal.”

David Clancy, lecturer in genetics and the biology of ageing at Lancaster University, said: “The question is whether this finding might be relevant to lifespan in humans. If the lifespan extension were dependent on early growth or developmental effects, it is unlikely to be useful in humans.

“There should already be data from other observational studies in humans that will give a strong indication whether there is an association in people.

“Ideally, a randomised control trial would give a more robust answer, but following the experiment through the human lifespan would take too much time.”