Metformin, used as a treatment for diabetes, is a weak candidate for a calorie restriction mimetic drug, one that causes some of the same metabolic changes (and thus hopefully health and longevity benefits) as calorie restriction. The evidence for health and longevity benefits actually resulting from this usage is mixed and debatable, however; certainly nowhere near as clear as for, say, rapamycin. Here researchers propose that metfomin's method of action stems in part from suppressing chronic inflammation, which is known to contribute to the progression of age-related frailty and disease:

[Researchers] found that the antidiabetic drug metformin reduces the production of inflammatory cytokines that normally activate the immune system, but if overproduced can lead to pathological inflammation, a condition that both damages tissues in aging and favors tumor growth. Cells normally secrete these inflammatory cytokines when they need to mount an immune response to infection, but chronic production of these same cytokines can also cause cells to age. Such chronic inflammation can be induced, for example by smoking, and old cells are particular proficient at making and releasing cytokines.

"We were surprised by our finding that metformin could prevent the production of inflammatory cytokines by old cells. The genes that code for cytokines are normal, but a protein that normally triggers their activation called NF-kB can't reach them in the cell nucleus in metformin treated cells. We also found that metformin does not exert its effects through a pathway commonly thought to mediate its antidiabetic effects. We have suspected that metformin acts in different ways on different pathways to cause effects on aging and cancer. Our studies now point to one mechanism."

Link: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130327093604.htm

Source:
http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2013/03/metformin-may-act-to-reduce-chronic-inflammation.php