Much like Dracula prolonging his life by drinking the blood of young victims, new research has shown that transfusions of young blood may keep older humans disease-free.
With Dracula managing to prolong his life after drinking the blood of his young victims, science is not far behind Bram Stoker’s fictional character as scientists now claim new research has shown that transfusions of young blood may actually help to stave off serious illness in older patients.
Leading geneticist Dame Linda Partridge from University College London has just published research which suggests that young blood could actually prevent people from developing diseases like heart disease, cancer, and dementia, according to the Daily Mail.
Dame Partridge’s research is helping to create a whole new wave of medicine that is working to keep people younger and disease-free, with start-ups like Ambrosia, which is based in San Francisco, already conducting human trials on patients.
In her research, Dame Partridge has proven that when older mice are injected with young, fresh blood, these mice not only failed to develop diseases that normally accompany old age, but their cognitive abilities were also markedly higher than they would have been if they had not been given transfusions of young blood.
Because of the astonishingly high success rate of this treatment, Partridge believes that scientists need to be studying the blood of animals to help them determine which molecules are involved in maintaining pristine physical health.
“Identification of these is a high priority for research. The practical accessibility of both the human microbiome and blood system makes therapeutic manipulation a particularly attractive approach, but research in animals is needed to establish the long-term consequences and possible side effects.”
In their new study, Partridge and co-authors P. Eline Slagboom and Joris Deelen also explained, “Blood is the most practically accessible and therefore the most commonly investigated tissue, but it is much less commonly used in animal studies. It will be important to develop blood-based biomarkers of risk, aging hallmarks and responses to candidate interventions in animals.”
Before Dame Partridge’s most recent study, Ambrosia conducted their own trial with 70 patients, with the strict criteria that they must all be over 35-years-old.
After being given plasma from individuals that were between 16 and 25 years of age, scientists noticed that there was a major difference in the biomarkers for diseases. For instance, those involved in the trial found that their cholesterol levels dropped by 10 percent, while carcinoembryonic antigens were lowered by 20 percent.
One of the patients who was involved in the Ambrosia trial was 55 years of age and was suffering from early-onset Alzheimers, and after a single transfusion of young blood found that they were already experiencing positive results. Ambrosia believes that with enough work, it may even be possible that elderly patients will only need just two injections each year to help them with health-related issues.
With so many positive results stemming from transfusions of young blood into older patients, the dream of eternal youth without heartbreaking health issues and diseases may one day be achievable.
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