Podcast episode 142 (in German)

Plasma exchange against aging – dilution instead of young blood?

November 19, 2026

First a company in California sold young donor plasma for 8,000 dollars per liter, then a more elegant idea came out of the lab: perhaps old blood does not need to be rejuvenated, only diluted. In humans an effect appeared, and it went away again.

What it is about

In plasma exchange, blood runs through a centrifuge, the cells go back, and the plasma is replaced with albumin; for certain neurological and autoimmune diseases this has been established practice for decades. The link to aging came via mice with a shared circulation and via the finding that old blood holds back more than young blood helps. In 2020, a single exchange with saline plus albumin was enough in old mice for muscle, liver and the memory center to recover. The episode goes through the 3 studies in humans and listens to the users: an entrepreneur who found no benefit after 6 exchanges, and people with long COVID or chronic fatigue syndrome who describe improvement and relapse. In the end there is a question for practice: what exactly is being measured, and what does it look like after the sixth session?

Key points

In the AMBAR trial, sponsored by the albumin manufacturer Grifols, everyday functioning in 347 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s declined 52 percent less over 14 months than under sham treatment.
At the Buck Institute, 42 healthy people over 50 received exchange or sham treatment in 4 groups; after 3 sessions, epigenetic clocks were 2.6 years younger with immunoglobulins and 1.3 years younger with exchange alone.
After 6 sessions, no difference from sham treatment was measurable in any group; the authors suspect counter-regulation. Function, thinking and symptoms were not assessed at all.
As a report: Bryan Johnson had 6 exchanges with young plasma, one of them with his son’s plasma, and in July 2023, after blood values, devices and imaging, reported: no benefit.
As a report: a Dutch woman with long COVID paid over 15,000 euros abroad in 2 months and felt no improvement; 6 others felt better after a few rounds, but nobody was cured.
Sham-controlled studies from Spain with 50 and Mainz with 40 people found no difference; in a preprint from Suriname with 18 people, the fatigue score roughly halved in the sham group as well.
In the registry of the World Apheresis Association with over 50,000 treatments, side effects occurred in a little over 8 percent of first sessions, mostly tingling or a drop in blood pressure, severe ones in 0.4 percent.

Where the data stop

In healthy people there is one controlled study with around 10 people per group, allocated by registration date and treated at a co-author’s company; the authors themselves call it hypothesis-generating. Whether a younger clock means a longer life, nobody knows. In AMBAR it is impossible to separate what works: the exchange, the albumin or the immunoglobulins. As of September 2026, a study is registered in China that measures frailty, that is, function, still without a sham group.

Those who report improvement really experience it; the sham treatments only show that much of it also comes without exchange. At the Charité, 14 of 20 patients responded to a related filtering method, 7 relapsed, and in Rostock the antibodies were back after 3 to 6 months. What a healthy person mainly notices is the bill: 1,800 euros per session at a German private practice. Anyone receiving the procedure for a neurological or autoimmune disease stays with it.

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Published on November 19, 2026.

The topic in the database

One’s own blood plasma is exchanged – the idea behind it: removing aging and inflammation factors from the blood (“plasma dilution”). Medic…Therapeutic plasma exchange (TPE)

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Information only, not medical advice and not a usage or dosage recommendation. Prescription-only and unapproved substances belong in the hands of a physician. Last updated: 2026-09-25.