Hi, any thoughts about plasma exchange, also known as plasmapheresis? Nice small study on using it to enhance cognition in folks with mild Alzheimer’s. Physician friend of mine also finds it helpful for autoimmune disorders. And there appears to be an anti-aging component as well. And yes, it’s expensive. Thanks.
Hi, yes, we like it generally. But its still early and there hasn’t been much evidence in clinical studies yet.
I’ve done a session of 6 plasmapheresis sessions as part of this clinical study at the following link. I didn’t notice much difference, and have found rapamycin much better in terms of improving my quality of life and functionality. See this thread: Plasmapheresis Startup Looking for Clinical Trial Participants SF Bay Area
I suspect it is most helpful to people over 70 who are not in great shape.
We’ve had a bit of a skunkworks on how we might be able to lower the cost of it, and people are talking about starting a low cost approach. Read more here: Lowering the Cost / Improving Access for Therapeutic Plasma Exchange (Plasmapheresis)
Some other links and discussions about it here:
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Avoid the MDs selling TPE for thousands unless you have a medical condition shown to be helped by TPE in which case you might be covered by insurance or the money is no issue. You can simply donate plasma for free, although the volume per donation is smaller. My donations are 800 mls which is about 25% of plasma volume and I can donate 1x/4wks at my local blood bank. There are also plasma donation centers which are not as common as blood banks, but which allow two donations per week, so in short order you can turn over most of plasma volume. There’s still a lot to learn about this process, such as volume and frequency. I’ve been donating for about 2 years. I haven’t started yet but intend to begin blood testing some of the markers mentioned on the 2022 Conboy paper involving human subjects. You might also check the 2021 paper by Rob Flickenger, which documents proteome changes, following the Conboy model, from a very small number of human subjects doing normal plasma donation like I do. There are clear limitations in the study, but it suggested many of the same kinds of positive gene expression changes the Conboy’s published in their 2020 paper. In any case, much more work needed to understand and fine tune this process. The Conboys are continuing their work, and I believe Retro Biosciences is doing work with plasma exchange which might be released later this year,
BTW, here is a study which shows that long term plasma donation can reduce persistent chemicals, like fire retardants, which build up in our tissues.
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You donate plasma instead of whole blood so you can turnover more plasma volume? That’s interesting. I’ve been donating whole blood every 3 mos for a while. I’ve been interested in dumping iron (red blood cells) so the whole blood was the ticket but perhaps I could add a plasma donation in between my whole blood donations….
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Don’t they want just AB types?
When I donate plasma or platelets, they also take out about 50 mls of whole blood for testing. Over time this adds up, so easy to drop iron slowly that way. In fact, my ferritin tends to be on the low side so I found myself at well below low end of reference range when I tested. So I now take a low dose Fe supplement a couple of days after each donation or a few days before and test ferritin more often. I want to stay at lower end but not sure if optimum has been determined.
BTW, On the NUS Medicine channel Prof. Christiaan Leeuwenburgh gave a good presentation on Fe Deregulation and Aging which might be of interest. He also talks about ways preserve Fe homeostasis. Begins about 7 minutes in.
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I am A+ which is common. So far as I know there is no blood type limitation. I routinely donate platelets and plasma. They prefer platelets which can be done 24 times a year with each platelet donation accounting for about 300 mls of plasma loss, a bit more than whole blood donation which can’t be done more than 1x/8wks.
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Very helpful. Much appreciated. I will check out the links.
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I have rare blood, would I need the same blood group if I go for blood transfusion for anti aging ?
I don’t think so. They didn’t ask me what my blood type was when I did the therapeutic plasma exchange.
But - they did do blood draws from me prior to doing the TPE treatment series, so I guess they could have determined it from those blood samples, but I don’t think so, the blood samples were identified for analysis of before and after effects of the TPE treatments.
@Rapadmin,
given the giant amount of knowledge you have accumulated I have two questions regarding this topic:
- is anything known about giving plasma (or full blood) of an old individual to a young individual either human or animal
- is there some effort going on to isolate the substances involved in the anti-ageing or pro-ageing by younger vs. older plasma (and maybe direct targeting of those substances)
Thanks.
Thank you for the response. Once blood transfer becomes more assessable I will be taking the plunge.
Yes - they have tested putting old blood into younger animals (mice)… I think Tony Wyss-Coray’s lab did it in mice at Stanford years ago. I recommend this article and interview with Tony: Tony Wyss-Coray, neurologist: ‘We can do a blood test and learn what you will die from’ | Science | EL PAÍS English
There is some effort by different groups in identifying the factors in blood that are pro-aging and anti-aging. Irina and Mike Conboy at UC Berkeley have been very involved in this work, also Harold Katcher has done work in this area and has been testing with E5, an exosome type of approach. Search on our site and you can find many past discussions on these people and their work.
All of this is ongoing in labs, but limited commercialization as of yet.
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Thank you very much. Will follow the link and also look at the info on this site you mentioned.
RapAdmin, do you know of any paper from the study you were enrolled in at Kiprov’s clinic? Dr Kiprov presented the results verbally at a conference in Las Vegas many months ago, but nothing in writing AFAIK.
Nothing yet. I think they will tell the participants when / if they do publish something. I’ll reach back out to the study co-ordinator today and ask. Will report back if its anytime soon.
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I spoke with Dr. Kiprov on Monday. They are currently preparing the paper for publication
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