Recently, there has been a lot of research exploring the effects of treating various medical conditions with blood plasma.
Plasma is the straw-coloured fluid that contains the red and white cells in the body’s blood circulatory system, and when the red and white cells are removed, plasma is left. Plasma makes up about half of what constitutes our blood, and it is also filled with proteins and nutrients that help support the body’s many functions.
Recently, researchers have demonstrated in mice that plasma, when taken from young animals and infused into older animals, can improve the health of the older animals. They have also shown that ‘young’ plasma can have beneficial effects in models of degenerative conditions. These findings have led to a number of clinical trials.
One such trial has been ‘The Stanford Parkinson’s Disease Plasma Study’ which was conducted in California. This was a safety and tolerability trial involving 15 people with Parkinson’s who were treated with 1 unit of young plasma twice a week for 4 weeks. The results of the study have now been published and they suggest that the treatment was safe and well tolerated. The study coordinators concluded that the results of their study warrant further therapeutic investigations in a larger cohort of people with Parkinson’s.
