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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Interesting that the once per month for six months group did better than the twice per month for three months group. Suggests that the treatment needs to be applied over longer time periods for greater effect. I’d be curious what twice per month for six months would look like. The other surprising result of this study is the dramatic impact of IVIG - it seems prudent to request this for anyone that’s considering TPE.
Surprisingly, we observed no significant BA differences at time point 3 compared to sham in any group, suggesting potential compensatory mechanisms that mitigate the anti-aging effects after multiple sessions
Afaict, they took samples before session 1, 4 and 6, corresponding to time points 1, 2 and 3. The quote above indicates there is actually no benefit to TPE, or at least, you want to stop after 3 sessions. I wonder if this is a limitation of the sample size or if it truly indicates a null result here. IMO the study is written in a way that makes it sound better than it actually is by consistently referring to the benefits at time point 2, despite the end result being no better than sham. I suppose saying it didn’t work by the end of the study only takes one sentence so that’s what they put (as quoted above).
I think they really should have taken samples at least a month after the final session, I’m actually a bit perplexed as to why they would go through all of this effort and cost without doing some, presumably relatively cheaper, final testing. I also don’t understand why they did the 6th session at all if they only took samples before the 6th session (for time point 3). Perhaps I’m missing something here?
“The quote above indicates there is actually no benefit to TPE, or at least, you want to stop after 3 sessions. I wonder if this is a limitation of the sample size or if it truly indicates a null result here”.
It appears Kiprov et al believe that a null result is indicated, by the pain they do take to make an explanation: (“restoring” is ingenious instead of “nullify”)
“We find that the subsequent therapy sessions restored most of the benefits of the first three sessions, with the restoration being linearly dependent on the initial BA (biological aging) effects …We postulate that this may be due to either cell-intrinsic programming, in which cells have inherent mechanisms to compensate and adapt to changes induced by the therapy, or exposome effects, in which lifestyle and environmental factors restore the body back to its baseline state, reducing the response to treatment over time”.
The study is a huge disappointment. As I understand it, it’s likely a nail in the coffin for TPE.
As quoted by dicarlo2 “no difference in outcome between any of the treatment groups and the sham group between baseline and the last measurements, indicating compensatory mechanisms setting in after the improvements seen in the mid term”.
Another lesson learned: short-term results are no proof. Postive results after three months, none after six months.
Further questions I would have:
is there any publication in a peer review respectable journal that shows a substantial and statistically significant result (p=0,05 or better) for plasma exchange without any simultaneous changes in medication, diet or training effort.
If yes : how much plasma was exchanged volume/exchange and how often.
How long did the result last. If we can find the half-life for the effect we might be able to find which factor in SASP is behind this mechanism (interleukin?, or some other substances washed out)
Hopefully it would result in finding a much simpler way to influence that factor.
