Introduction to Young Plasma Infusions
Just to clarify for everyone what the phrase "young plasma infusions" refers to:
Plasma is the water portion of blood in which blood cells are suspended. It includes salts, proteins, hormones, and many other non-cell components.
The idea of transferring young plasma into older people for the purpose of rejuvenation is at least somewhat related to studies of parabiosis, which found that when an old mouse shares the circulatory system of a young mouse, the old mouse appears to get younger (and the young mouse appears to get older, by some measures).
The thinking here is that there are components in the blood--possibly non-cell components such as hormones and signaling factors--that affect health and rejuvenation capacity.
One way to replicate these possible positive effects of non-cell components of young blood is to infuse older people with plasma from younger people. Plasma donation and infusion are common and standardized medical procedures, so it does not need special development or approval like a new pharmaceutical does.
At least one company is providing this service commercially: Ambrosia. As of this writing, their website is not functioning properly.
It would be interesting to many members of this group if anyone receiving young plasma would share their experiences in this section of the forum. If you'd like to share your story, I invite you to click "start a new topic" on the right side of the forum page in this section.
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Brian, are you considering doing this? Here is the update
https://www.businessinsider.com/young-blood-transfusions-ambrosia-shut-down-2019-6
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I'm assuming Paul you are referring to Josh Mitteldorf's "Age Reduction Breakthrough" article where he talks about Harold Katcher's plasma fraction treatment reducing the epigenetic age of multiple tissue. According to David Sinclair, if the findings hold up, "rejuvenation of the body may become commonplace within our lifetimes."
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"Elixir" Resets Horvath's Clock
This is the work being referred to above. A preprint was recently placed on BioRXiv at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1 , authored by Steve Horvath, many others, and in particular Harold Katcher and Akshay Sanghavi, the founders of Nugenics Research of Mumbai, India They report an experiment in which they use "Elixir", a Nugenics proprietary combination of active ingredients extracted from the blood plasma of young rats. They administer Elixir to old rats, and observe the effects on various biomarkers of aging, including Horvath's famous DNA methylation profiles. The results are spectacular, showing that the DNA methylation profiles were reset in age in various tissues ranging from liver to brain and other biomarkers showed similar results. A popular account of the paper is available at Longevity Technology.
I am very surprised by these results. I had previously argued that periodic injections of young plasma could not be expected to do much because the active agents could only be resident in the recipient's bloodstream for a day or so, and any beneficial effect would be transitory at best. These experimental results indicate that this is not the case. The effects on rats last well after the treatment period and seem to be permanent. Therefore, I'm puzzled. I don't understand the mechanism.
I asked Harold Katchner about this. He would only say that my assumptions were wrong, but implied that he was unable to explain why and how for trade-secret reasons.
If anyone understands how brief exposure to the active agents in a derivative of young plasma can produce long-lasting effect, please explain it to me.