Can an Apheresis Therapy become an Effective Method for Anti-Aging Medicine?

Abstract

100 During last 30 years, apheresis technologies had helped to treat many diseases by removing pathological macromolecules or pathological cells from patient’s blood. They included the cryofiltration to remove cryogel and the thermofiltration to remove LDL cholesterol. Unfortunately during these 30 years, developments of new apheresis technologies were not actively pursued by apheresis practitioners in the world including our group. Some diseases once treated by apheresis procedures were also shrank substantially. However, we believed that apheresis therapy had many possibilities to treat the major disease categories including heart diseases, diabetes mellitus and cancer. Even aging process might be able to be prevented by apheresis therapy. In this paper, we should go over current membrane apheresis technologies and should introduce our concept of “Juzo” as an Anti-Aging artificial organ which was presented in 1995. Then we should introduce the new types of the 2nd generation apheresis technologies by referencing recent papers which supported our study directions. The new technologies included in this paper were the cryoaggregate filtration to remove pathological globulin molecules for the treatment of cardiomyopathic diseases, cryoreactive albumin removal apheresis (CRARA) for the treatment and for the prevention of diabetic complications of diabetic patients by removing pathological albumin and bioincompatible apheresis system for cancer treatment. In conclusion, apheresis therapies could remove pathological molecules accumulated excessively in the aging living body. The return to the normal levels of these molecules might be an effective interventional method as an Anti-Aging medical therapy.