Plasma Dilution Shown to Rejuvenate Humans

[BrianA]

More work from the Conboy lab. Also there is a 40 person study starting up on this from a commercial company called Lyfspn. Since plasmapheresis is a pre-existing established FDA-approved procedure, in theory this could be rolled out fairly quickly to the public at large?

 

"The researchers took a look at the variances in protein expression (proteomic noise) in order to use it as a biomarker. This noise is difficult to analyze with such a small sample group, so they focused on proteins that greatly change in standard deviation from young people to old people, and from older people without cognitive disease to older people that do have it.

A total of ten proteins were found to be useful as biomarkers under this analysis. Very interestingly, the team’s calculations and analysis concluded that this noise shows that the biological age of people with cognitive disease is equivalent to 130 years old, an age to which no one has yet lived. Their results also show that this biomarker is dropped by decades in people who have undergone TPE."

 

https://www.lifespan.io/news/plasma-dilution-shown-to-rejuvenate-humans/

 

https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2022/06/lyfspn-working-on-clinical-trials-of-plasmapheresis/

[BrianA]

For anyone interested in free TPE treatment, and near Nashville or wants to travel, there is a clinical trial for TPE starting up at the Maxwell Clinic. Sponsored by a silicon valley company, I'm not clear on the company but possibly one I've read about called lyfspn.

 

https://maxwellclinic.com/clinicaltrials/rb/

[Saul]

Hi Brian!

I applied for the free TPE treatment.  (I'm in great health, but IMO the positive evidence about the probiosis is strong.)  If I'm accepted into the trial, I will of course carefully study the details before giving consent.  The procedure involves 9 trips to Tennessee, with exchange of my plasma for youthful plasma.

My guess:  those who are accepted to this program are the "guinea pigs" for a large, very expensive commercial plan, which will then be opened to elderly, very rich people.

  --  Saul

[BrianA]

Awesome, I sent it to my parents but they declined. I'm considering it myself since I live fairly close by. Please post whatever details you hear back. There are a few posts from someone on the GRG (Gerontology Research Group) email list who has already been to this clinic and reports their epigenetic age dropped by 9 years before/after.

[Saul]

Hi Brian!

Of course, that depends on how you define "epigenetic age".

  --  Saul

[mccoy]

Incredible, parabiosis hitting the real world, it's called plasma dilution now and has less ethical problems, it is clear though that the donors will be people of low economic status, trying to make some money selling their young plasma. It is more a case of symbiosis, unwealthy people helping healthier 'vampires' to rejuvenate in change of a sum.

[BrianA]

AFAIK, the process does not use whole plasma at this point, it has been refined to use a combination of saline and some 5% albumin solution (which is yes derived from human plasma donations).

 

I see aging as a disease to be treated as any other disease, I don't see any ethical issue with using parts of plasma that people have willingly donated to help others in need. Additionally as far as cost, the history of such things is as the process becomes more refined and proven, and grows in use, the price comes down and/or availability to everyone increases.

 

You can be sure that once any longevity treatment is truly proven to extend people's lives, that in all democracies I expect there will be very heavy pressure on the government-run health care (such as Medicare in the US) to begin covering the cost of it.

 

As for what epigenetic testing is used, my understanding is they are using these: https://trudiagnostic.com/

I think this will include the DunedinPACE data.

[IgorF]

Since I am not eligible for the program mentioned I tried to answer myself if I would join such a program under current circumstances and failed to do it.

The program starts from 45yo and I am just curious about the arguments of healthy people in their late 40ies to take such risks/rewards proposal. IMHO it is comparable to buy potential unicorn shares for the half of the whole life savings or something similar.

In other words - there are looooooooong discussions about vaccinations, especially for COVID-19 but the proposed thing is several orders of magnitude less predictable from the outcomes perspective. The history of donor plasma screening for hepatitis viruses is a good example - we just have no way to screen for all the potentially harmful things.

So joining such a program after 60 can be seen as an acceptable ratio - something unknown that could cause serious damage will perhaps have no decades left to do it, but at 45, hm..

On the other hand - a courage is an ultimate argument, just to participate in something described in fiction books, mmm..

[mccoy]

3 hours ago, IgorF said:

So joining such a program after 60 can be seen as an acceptable ratio

It really depends, I'd just change the 60 figure into 80 if there is a probability of harm greater than 5%. I'd keep the figure 60 if it is shown by lhard evidence that the probability of harm is close to zero.

Edited January 29, 2023 by mccoy

[BrianA]

I'd reiterate what I mentioned above, draw a distinction between whole plasma and in this particular case only a part of plasma is being used called albumin. Along with that in this dilution procedure my understanding is only saline is used.

 

So is albumin from human sources safe? I found this interesting review of the production process, cold fractionation:

 

https://aob.amegroups.com/article/view/4496/5240

 

Check the section titled "Current viral reduction treatments". You can read about the production process, and how these measures have effectively deactivated or filtered out viruses even before they became know to exist. Albumin in particular is described to go through a pasteurization step to further reduce risks.

[IgorF]

Thanks Brian, nanofiltration was the thing I missed out, so there is at least one non-specific, "area-wide" and robust if implemented accurately tool in the toolkit available, that is nice to know.

On the other hand, reading the article raised another question - in sum, there could be a lot of steps implemented in the procedure and non-specialists could need months of reading just to get more familiar with the technology. In other words - maybe the only way to lower the anxiety (for those who have it) is to do as it is done in such cases - governance (licensing, control, etc) and waiting for big numbers, but unlike vaccines such numbers will come in decades, unless the success will be so huge that it will speedup the implementation.

Br,
Igor

[BrianA]

Here's a report on a competing approach using young plasma, they now have set the record for longest lived female Sprague Dawley rat: 47 months.

 

Anti-ageing scientists extend lifespan of oldest living lab rat

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/08/anti-ageing-scientists-extend-lifespan-of-oldest-living-lab-rat

[Ron Put]

Albumin transfusions are common and often life-saving, but I am not sure about the long term effects, and would exercise great caution before there is better human data and in healthy subjects.