The FDA officially warns against buying young blood



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The US Food and Drug Administration officially warns consumers that buying young blood injections to improve their health is not a good idea. In fact, this is a very bad idea because there is no clinical evidence that infusions have a beneficial effect, and the procedure could be dangerous.

"In simple terms, we are concerned that some patients may be victims of unscrupulous drug remedies extolling donor plasma treatments as remedies and cures," write FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and Peter Marks. , Director of the FDA's Center for Evaluation and Research on Biologics. l & # 39; warning. "Such treatments have no proven clinical benefit for the uses for which these clinics advertise them and are potentially harmful."

The idea that infusions of young blood could slow down aging has existed since the early 2000s, when studies in mice showed promising results. (Notably, young and old mice did not only share blood, they were attached and also shared organs.) The concept really gained ground a few years ago, in part because of a rumor that venture capitalist Peter Thiel was interested in transfusions. Like other sites, including Bloomberg have noted, despite the bizarre nature of the complaint, jokes about vampirism and a parody of the show Silicon Valley, the idea has not disappeared and there are young blood clinics. Notably, a startup called Ambrosia Medical has promised transfusions of $ 8,000 per liter. "It works," said Ambrosia's founder, Jesse Karmazin, to Microphone journalist. "It reverses aging."

There is virtually no evidence that this statement is true. Some of the researchers who performed the initial studies on young blood have shown (again in the mouse) that older blood does worse than young blood helps and suggests that it would be a better idea to study rather why the old blood is harmful. In 2017, a rigorous clinical trial found that the young blood administered to 18 patients with Alzheimer's disease barely allowed treatment of the disease. Not only is this ineffective, but even conventional transfusions can be dangerous, resulting in a few dozen deaths each year reported to the FDA.

It is clear that much more research on this "treatment" is needed, although this has not stopped companies like Ambrosia from selling it to individuals. A Huffington Post The investigation revealed that Karmazin was not allowed to practice medicine in Massachusetts, had conducted a poorly designed study on the effectiveness of young blood, which did not even have a control group, and had not published information from this study, although he continued to take money.

Scientists have repeatedly pointed out that there is no reliable data to support this practice. The FDA finally agrees. So, please, if the lack of clinical evidence and questionable practices of the startups was not enough deterrent, listen to the FDA about it.

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