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Beware of Using Young People's Blood to Halt Aging, FDA Says

posted by martyb on Wednesday February 20 2019, @03:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the Vamp-ire? dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Taking a young person's plasma and infusing it into an older person to ward off aging -- a therapy that's fascinated some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley -- has no proven clinical benefit, the Food and Drug Administration said.

The agency issued a safety alert on Tuesday about the infusion of plasma from young donors for the prevention of conditions such as aging or memory loss, or for the treatment of such conditions as dementia, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease or post‐traumatic stress disorder.

"There is no proven clinical benefit of infusion of plasma from young donors to cure, mitigate, treat or prevent these conditions, and there are risks associated with the use of any plasma product," the FDA said in a statement from Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and Peter Marks, head of the agency's biologics center.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-19/beware-of-buying-young-people-s-blood-to-prevent-aging-fda-says

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:09PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:09PM (#804078)

    Blood cells don't come from blood cells, they are made in bone marrow: "The cells develop in the bone marrow and circulate for about 100–120 days in the body" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_blood_cell [wikipedia.org] So transfusing blood gets you red blood cells made from younger bone marrow that will die and need to be replaced again shortly. To do it right, get a skeleton transplant. (Or as the industry may prefer, get your "Frequent transfusioner" discount card and go back 4 times a year for the price of 3!)

  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Wednesday February 20 2019, @08:12PM (1 child)

    by Sulla (5173) on Wednesday February 20 2019, @08:12PM (#804186) Journal

    Again, correct me where I am wrong.

    Did a quick browsing of wiki on bone marrow transplants.

    Many recipients of HSCTs are multiple myeloma[10] or leukemia patients[11] who would not benefit from prolonged treatment with, or are already resistant to, chemotherapy. Candidates for HSCTs include pediatric cases where the patient has an inborn defect such as severe combined immunodeficiency or congenital neutropenia with defective stem cells, and also children or adults with aplastic anemia[12] who have lost their stem cells after birth. Other conditions[13] treated with stem cell transplants include sickle-cell disease, myelodysplastic syndrome, neuroblastoma, lymphoma, Ewing's sarcoma, desmoplastic small round cell tumor, chronic granulomatous disease, Hodgkin's disease and Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome. More recently non-myeloablative, "mini transplant(microtransplantation)," procedures have been developed that require smaller doses of preparative chemo and radiation. This has allowed HSCT to be conducted in the elderly and other patients who would otherwise be considered too weak to withstand a conventional treatment regimen.

    If I am understanding correctly, the purpose of the bone marrow transplants is to replace bad/improper Hematopoietic stem cells with donor cells that are presumed to be better. This causes new blood production to be based off of better cells. So, if it were not so dangerous, would bone marrow transplants where the donors are younger, provide better functioning blood cells? If cell division does not lead to breakdown in quality of blood cells over time, there should be no improvement, but if there is a fall in quality over time it could be a way to kick-start the system (if the procedure can be made less dangerous).

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @09:33AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 21 2019, @09:33AM (#804439)

      So, if it were not so dangerous, would bone marrow transplants where the donors are younger, provide better functioning blood cells?

      No.