Below is an approximation of this video’s audio content material. To see any graphs, charts, graphics, photographs, and quotes to which Dr. Greger could also be referring, watch the above video.
“Vampires 2.0? The ethical quandaries of young blood infusion in the quest for eternal life.” In an episode of the TV collection Silicon Valley entitled “The Blood Boy,” a tech guru hires a younger assistant from whom to transfuse pints of blood in an try and decelerate his getting old. The restoration of youth by bathing in or consuming the blood of youth is a centuries-old trope courting again not less than to the futile try of ailing Pope Innocent VIII, who within the 1490s did not reside as much as his title by apparently consuming the blood of three ten-year-old boys who—although a cut price “costing just one ducat apiece’’—died within the course of.
Might there be one thing to it, although? Though younger blood didn’t have a big impression on lifespan in any other case, infusing the blood of younger animals into outdated did have rejuvenating results on a number of organs, just like full-blown parabiosis, as I talked about within the final video. In reality, not solely does the infusion of younger mouse blood enhance age-related cognitive dysfunction in outdated mice, younger human blood—taken from umbilical cords—labored too (in mice engineered to not reject the overseas tissue). This led to ongoing medical trials providing weekly infusions of blood merchandise from younger donors to sufferers with gentle to reasonable Alzheimer’s illness. But there could also be a better method.
Yes, the injection of blood from younger mice into outdated can enhance reminiscence and studying, suggesting there’s some sort of restorative youth issue. But the injection of blood from outdated mice into younger can worsen reminiscence and studying, suggesting that as a substitute there’s some kind of debilitating getting old issue. Or possibly the outdated blood is simply diluting the revitalizing issue within the younger mouse. Or, for that matter, possibly the younger blood is diluting the debilitating issue within the outdated mouse. The indisputable fact that outdated blood seems to make issues worse greater than younger blood makes them higher suggests possibly the latter is the case. But you don’t know till you place it to the check.
Ready for a mind-blowing shift in perspective? Instead of infusing younger blood into outdated mice, researchers at UC Berkeley simply diluted the blood of outdated mice by siphoning off the plasma (the liquid portion of the blood), and basically changing half of it with water. If the regeneration seen in heterochronic parabiosis and blood transfusions was as a consequence of some fountain of youth think about younger blood, then nothing ought to occur, proper? But if all of the younger blood was doing was diluting some debilitating getting old issue, then the water ought to work simply as nicely. And it did. The rejuvenation within the liver was just like parabiosis or transfusion, and within the muscle tissues and the mind, it was even higher. So, most, if not all, the advantages could possibly be replicated by easy dilution, together with an enchancment in cognitive capability.
That’s excellent news, since there’s already an FDA-approved process in use right now referred to as therapeutic plasma alternate. It’s normally used to filter out toxins or autoimmune antibodies, however why not attempt utilizing it to attempt to dilute outdated blood to deal with Alzheimer’s illness? And that’s precisely what researchers did.
Hundreds of Alzheimer’s sufferers had been randomized to a therapeutic plasma alternate process or a placebo (sham) process. And although it didn’t appear to assist these with gentle Alzheimer’s illness, these with reasonable Alzheimer’s randomized to the actual process skilled about 60 p.c much less cognitive and purposeful decline over a interval of 14 months. This is in stark distinction to mainstay remedies for Alzheimer’s, just like the drug memantine, that may assist with signs however don’t truly alter the course of the illness. And the added benefit over blood transfusions, as a Director of an Institute of Biomedical Ethics put it: “There is something peculiar about the old literally feeding on the young.”
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