Injecting the blood plasma of healthy young people into people with Alzheimer’s disease appears to be safe, and the practice may even lead to small improvements in daily functioning in Alzheimer’s patients, a new small trial suggests.
But not all experts are lining up behind this technique, and instead argue that the science simply isn’t there yet to support it.
It sounds a little (OK, a lot) sci-fi: infusing old people with young blood to reverse the scars of aging and disease. Indeed, the concept is more speculative than most science that makes it to the human-testing phase. No one knows why young blood might help improve a degenerative disease like Alzheimer’s, and the vast majority of the research so far has been done in rodents. If it works — and that is far from certain — it’s a total mystery as to why.
