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Young blood transfusion refers to transfusing blood or blood components specifically from a young person into an older one with the intention of creating or studying a potential health benefit. Some in the scientific community currently views the practice as essentially pseudoscientific, with comparisons to snake oil. Other scientists such as Dr. Tony Wyss-Corray, professor of neurology and neurological sciences at Stanford University and co-director of the Stanford Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, study the role of immune and injury responses in neurodegeneration and Alzheimer's disease. Based on discoveries which showed circulatory blood factors can modulate brain structure and function and factors from young organisms can rejuvenate old brains Dr. Wyss-Corray, named by Time Magazine as one of the 50 most influential people in healthcare founded Alkahest, a clinical-stage biotechnology company focused on developing innovative therapies to treat age-related diseases based on young blood or blood factors and components. There are also concerns of harm, particularly with regard to blood infusions, which differ from blood tranfusions: Infusions add blood, increasing blood volume, without removing , creating risk of circulatory overload, swelling, and potential difficulty breathing. Transfusions, also known as apheresis, exchange blood components by taking away an old or damaged blood component and replacing it with a new donor blood component. The American Society for Apheresis (ASFA), an organization of physicians, scientists, nurses, and allied health professionals founded in 1982, advances apheresis medicine and evidence-based research for health care professionals using transfusion medicine a range of practices including pathology, transplantation, hematology, oncology, neurology, rheumatology, nephrology, hepatology, gastroenterology, cardiology, and ophthamology. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in 2019, cautioned "consumers against receiving young donor plasma infusions" stating that they are an "unproven treatment for varying conditions". On April 13, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued recommendations for the investigational use of plasma exchange using COVID-19 convalescent plasma to treat COVID-19 patients.

Research

Experiments at Stanford University on pairs of old and young rodents placed into parabiosis suggest that the circulation of blood from young mice seems to invigorate older mice. Parabiosis experiments are difficult to generalize, as the circulatory systems of the mice are fully joined and it is unclear whether the benefits come from the sharing of blood or the older mouse's access to the younger mouse's organs. A study conducted at UC Berkeley found that blood from older mice hurt younger mice, while older mice were not benefited by the blood of younger mice.

In experiments like this, researchers found that some of these mice died quickly (11 out of 69 in one experiment) for reasons the scientists could not explain, but described as possibly some form of rejection. Amy Wagers, a researcher who coauthored several mouse studies on young blood transfusion, has said that her papers do not provide a scientific basis for some of the existing human trials.

A review of studies on donor age for whole blood transfusions reported that blood from donors under the age of 20 years, when compared to donors aged 20-60 years, resulted in a modestly higher risk of death in the recipients. Research on blood transfusion outcomes has been complicated by the lack of careful characterization of the transfusion products that have been used in clinical trials; studies had focused on how storage methods and duration might affect blood, but not on the differences among lots of blood themselves.

Commercial development

In February 2019 the FDA warned about companies offering young blood transfusions stating: "simply put, we’re concerned that some patients are being preyed upon by unscrupulous actors touting treatments of plasma from young donors as cures and remedies. Such treatments have no proven clinical benefits for the uses for which these clinics are advertising them and are potentially harmful. There are reports of bad actors charging thousands of dollars for infusions that are unproven and not guided by evidence from adequate and well-controlled trials. The promotion of plasma for these unproven purposes could also discourage patients suffering from serious or intractable illnesses from receiving safe and effective treatments that may be available to them."

Ambrosia

A startup company, Ambrosia, has been selling "young blood transfusions" for $8,000 since 2016 under the guise of running a clinical trial, to see if such transfusions lead to changes in the blood of recipients. As of August 2017, they had 600 people join. The clinical trial has no control arm and so is neither randomized nor blind. As described, whole blood collected by blood banks that had passed its 42-day storage limit was centrifuged to remove cells, the resulting cell-free plasma pooled from several donations and intravenously transfused into recipients. The company was started by Jesse Karmazin, a medical school graduate without a license to practice medicine. David Wright is the licensed doctor overseeing the clinical trial; in his practice he administers intravenous treatments of vitamins and antibiotics for nontraditional purposes and was disciplined by the California Medical Board for the latter in 2015. Jonathan Kimmelman, a bioethicist from McGill University, suggests that Ambrosia is running this as a trial as they would be unable to get FDA approval to sell this treatment otherwise.

On February 19, 2019, Ambrosia announced it stopped testing the treatment, responding to concerns from the FDA.

Alkahest

Another company, Alkahest, was founded based on the Stanford rodent studies. As of 2017 it is collaborating with European pharmaceutical company Grifols to create a blood plasma-based experimental biologic drug which they propose to test on people with Alzheimer's.

Maharaj/Faloon trial

Scientific American reported in 2018 that young blood transfusion was being offered as a paid "trial", which, like Ambrosia's trial, had no distinct control group from the treatment; it also charged participants $285,000 per person. Dipnarine Maharaj, a Florida physician running the trial, has previously offered both traditional and nontraditional anti-aging treatments such as stem cell banking. He also has ties to the Hippocrates Health Institute, an organization promoting unproven alternative medicine. This trial was promoted by Bill Faloon, who founded the Life Extension Foundation, which was raided by the FDA In 1987 for illegally importing medicine, though the case was dropped in 1996.

Young Blood Institute

An organization called the Young Blood Institute has also run trials; these, however, involved exchange only of blood plasma.

References

1. Holley, Jason. "Young blood". Stanford Medicine. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
2. ^ Novella, Steven (3 August 2016). "Parabiosis – The Next Snakeoil". Science-Based Medicine.
3. ^ Robbins, Rebecca (March 2, 2018). "Young-Blood Transfusions Are on the Menu at Society Gala". Scientific American. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
4. ^ "Statement from FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, M.D., and Director of FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research Peter Marks, M.D., Ph.D., cautioning consumers against receiving young donor plasma infusions that are promoted as unproven treatment for varying conditions". FDA. 19 February 2019. Retrieved 20 February 2019.
5. "Wyss-Coray Lab". Wyss-Coray Lab. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
6. "Tony Wyss-Coray". Cure Alzheimer's Fund. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
7. "Wyss-Coray Lab". Wyss-Coray Lab. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
8. "Why Tony Wyss-Coray is One of the 50 Most Influential People in Health Care". Time. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
9. "Alkahest Scientific Founder Tony Wyss-Coray Recognized as One of TIME Magazine's 50 Most Influential People in Health Care". Alkahest. 2018-11-02. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
10. "Apheresis", Misplaced Pages, 2020-04-15, retrieved 2020-04-25
11. "Blog". youngbloodinstitute.org. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
12. "American Society for Apheresis", Misplaced Pages, 2019-10-01, retrieved 2020-04-25
13. Research, Center for Biologics Evaluation and (2020-04-13). "Recommendations for Investigational COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma". FDA.
14. Scudellari, Megan (January 21, 2015). "Ageing research: Blood to blood". Nature. 517 (7535): 426–429. Bibcode:2015Natur.517..426S. doi:10.1038/517426a. PMID 25612035.
15. Regalado, Antonio. "Old blood is bad for young mice—like, really bad". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 2018-06-10.
16. Edgren G, Ullum H, Rostgaard K, Erikstrup C, Sartipy U, Holzmann MJ, Nyrén O, Hjalgrim H (June 2017). "Association of Donor Age and Sex With Survival of Patients Receiving Transfusions". JAMA Intern Med. 177 (6): 854–60. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2017.0890. PMC 5540056. PMID 28437543.
17. Ning, S; Heddle, NM; Acker, JP (January 2018). "Exploring donor and product factors and their impact on red cell post-transfusion outcomes". Transfusion Medicine Reviews. 32 (1): 28–35. doi:10.1016/j.tmrv.2017.07.006. PMID 28988603.
18. ^ Mole, Beth (February 19, 2019). "Blood of the young won't spare rich old people from sadness and death, FDA says". Ars Technica. Archived from the original on February 20, 2019. Retrieved February 20, 2019.
19. ^ de Magalhães, JP; Stevens, M; Thornton, D (November 2017). "The Business of Anti-Aging Science". Trends in Biotechnology. 35 (11): 1062–1073. doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2017.07.004. PMID 28778607.
20. ^ Haynes, Gavin (21 August 2017). "Ambrosia: the startup harvesting the blood of the young". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 May 2018.
21. ^ Maxmen, Amy (January 13, 2017). "This startup takes cash from aging adults in exchange for young people's blood". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved May 26, 2018.
22. Drew, Liam (27 September 2017). "Neuroscience: The power of plasma". Nature. 549 (7673): S26 – S27. Bibcode:2017Natur.549S..26D. doi:10.1038/549S26a. PMID 28953857.
23. "Young Donor Plasma Transfusion and Age-Related Biomarkers". ClinicalTrials.gov. 17 June 2016. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
24. "The Hippocrates Health Institute: Cancer quackery finally under the spotlight, but will it matter?". Science-Based Medicine. 2015-02-23. Retrieved 2018-06-09.
25. Funcheon, Deirdra (2015-05-12). "South Florida Church Pursues Eternal Life Through Cryonics, Inflaming Critics and the IRS". Miami New Times. Retrieved 2018-06-10.
26. Almond, Steven (1994-06-08). "They're Gonna Live Forever". Miami New Times. Retrieved 2018-06-09.
27. Basu, Tanya; Weill, Kelly (22 February 2019). "FDA Warns: Don't Give These Companies Your 'Young Blood'". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 15 December 2019.

Further reading

• Makin, Simon (21 April 2017). "Fountain of Youth? Young Blood Infusions "Rejuvenate" Old Mice". Scientific American. Retrieved 5 May 2018.

• Alternative medicine
• Transfusion medicine
• Pseudoscience