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Young blood transfusion

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Young blood transfusion refers to transfusing blood specifically from a young person into an older person with the intention of creating a medicinal benefit. The scientific community currently views the practice as little more than snake oil. There have been no human trials published about the technique.

Evidence from two large studies in 2017 showed that the transfusion of blood from younger donors to older people was either no different from, or led to worse outcomes than, blood from older donors. 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.

The evidence suggesting the treatment could be beneficial was based on research done on rodents at Stanford University in which blood transfused from young mice seemed to invigorate older mice; the circulatory systems of the mice were connected which put them in a state of parabiosis.

Availability

A startup company named Ambrosia has been selling "young blood transfusions" for $8,000 since 2017 under the guise of running a clinical trial, to see if such transfusions lead to changes in the blood of recipients. The startup was started by Jesse Karmazin who has an MD but is not able to practice medicine as he has no license to do so. Another physician who is involved, David Wright is involved with doing intravenous treatments of vitamins and antibiotics for non traditional purposes. A bioethicist from McGill suggests that Ambrosia is running this trial as they would be unable to get FDA approval to sell this treatment otherwise.

A company, Alkahest, was spun out of Stanford based on that work, and as of 2017 was 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. Human trials are reported to be underway in China and Korea but with very little detail about what is actually involved.

References

  1. ^ Novella, Steven (3 August 2016). "Parabiosis – The Next Snakeoil". Science-Based Medicine.
  2. Robbins, Rebecca. "Young-Blood Transfusions Are on the Menu at Society Gala". Scientific American. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  3. ^ Garraud, O (August 2017). "Younger blood from older donors: Admitting ignorance and seeking stronger data and clinical trials?". Transfusion and apheresis science : official journal of the World Apheresis Association : official journal of the European Society for Haemapheresis. 56 (4): 635–636. doi:10.1016/j.transci.2017.07.002. PMID 28780993.
  4. 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.
  5. ^ 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. Open access icon
  6. Haynes, Gavin (21 August 2017). "Ambrosia: the startup harvesting the blood of the young". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 May 2018.
  7. ^ Maxmen, Amy. "This startup takes cash from aging adults in exchange for young people's blood". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  8. Drew, L (27 September 2017). "Neuroscience: The power of plasma". Nature. 549 (7673): S26 – S27. doi:10.1038/549S26a. PMID 28953857.
  9. Bercovici, Jeff. "Peter Thiel Is Very, Very Interested In Young People's Blood". Inc. Retrieved 5 May 2018.


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