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“Vampire 2.0? “The Ethical Conundrum of the Infusion of Young Blood in the Pursuit of Eternal Life.” In an episode of the TV series silicon valley A tech expert titled “The Blood Boy” hires a young assistant to transfuse his blood to slow aging. Restoring youth by bathing or drinking youthful blood is a centuries-old metaphor that goes back at least to the vain attempts of the ailing Pope Innocent VIII. He did not live up to his name by drinking the blood of three 10-year-old boys in the 1490s, dying in the process. Those who died in the process were “bargained for only one ducat each.”
Still, maybe there is something to it? Although young blood does not have a significant effect on lifespan, injecting the blood of a young animal into an old animal had the effect of revitalizing various organs, similar to full-fledged parabiosis, as discussed in the last video. In fact, not only did infusion of young mouse blood improve age-related cognitive dysfunction in older mice, but young human blood taken from the umbilical cord was also effective (in the case of mice engineered not to reject foreign tissue). This has led to clinical trials of weekly infusions of blood products from young donors into patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. But there might be an easier way.
That's right. Injecting old mice with blood from young mice can improve memory and learning, suggesting the presence of some kind of restorative youth factor. However, when blood from old mice is injected into young mice, their memory and learning ability can decline, suggesting some kind of aging factor instead. Or maybe the old blood is diluting the vital factors of the young mice. Or maybe the young blood is diluting the old rat's debilitating factors. The fact that older blood appears to make things worse than younger blood suggests that the latter may be true. But you won't know until you test it.
Are you ready to experience an incredible change in perspective? Instead of injecting young blood into old mice, researchers at UC Berkeley diluted the blood of older mice by sucking out their plasma (the liquid part of the blood) and replacing half of it with water. If the regeneration seen in heterochronic parabiosis and blood transfusions is due to the source of youth in young blood, then nothing should happen, right? But if all young blood was doing was diluting some of the factors that make aging worse, water would be just as effective. And it was. Rejuvenation in the liver was similar to parabiosis or blood transfusion, and was much better in the muscles and brain. Therefore, most, if not all, of the benefits, including improvements in cognitive abilities, can be reproduced with simple dilution.
This is good news. That's because an FDA-approved procedure known as therapeutic plasma exchange is already in use today. It's commonly used to filter out toxins or autoimmune antibodies, but what about using it to thin out old blood to treat Alzheimer's disease? And that's exactly what the researchers did.
Hundreds of Alzheimer's patients were randomly assigned to receive either therapeutic plasma exchange or a placebo procedure. Although it did not appear to benefit patients with mild Alzheimer's disease, patients with moderate Alzheimer's disease who were randomly assigned to the actual procedure saw an approximately 60% reduction in cognitive and functional decline over 14 months. This is in stark contrast to mainstream treatments for Alzheimer's disease, such as memantine, a drug that helps relieve symptoms but does not actually change the course of the disease. And the director of a biomedical ethics institute said it had additional advantages over blood transfusions. “There is something peculiar about the old literally preying on the young.”
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