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Transfusion of brain fluid from young mice improves memory in old mice

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Re: Transfusion of brain fluid from young mice improves memory in old mice

#103

These kinds of articles give me the creeps. As interesting as the science is, I imagine this also encourages a bunch of silicon valley millionaires and billionaires to essentially become vampires.

The show Silicon Valley had a small story arc that involved this kind of thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBA0AH-LSbo

Re: Transfusion of brain fluid from young mice improves memory in old mice

#105
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must have loved that cat very much.

My cat had (likely) something similar and needed to regularly be given subcutaneous saline fluid. He learned pretty quick to associate me stabbing him, with him feeling better. That kind of thing becomes easy once you get into the routine.

You've jogged my memory, it was subcutaneous not intravenous for my childhood cat as well. The saline would form a bulge under the skin before diffusing into the body. It wasn't something I did myself, we were bringing our cat to the vet to have it done until my parents tired of it.

Re: Transfusion of brain fluid from young mice improves memory in old mice

#106
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't my area of expertise at all. A personal experience that comes to mind is when my childhood cat developed kidney disease. She drank plenty of water, urinated excessively, and her blood still became toxic without regular (~daily) intervention in the form of adding saline to her blood intravenously. Like a light switch she'd resume normal life after the saline bag emptied into her blood, then slowly become il…

Was the cat checked for diabetes? Excessively drinking water, excessive urination, and renal failure are all co-morbidities for cats. Either way, kudos for helping them.

>Was the cat checked for diabetes?

>Excessively drinking water, excessive urination, and renal failure are all co-morbidities for cats. Either way, kudos for helping them.

Those particular symptoms are common (in cats at least) to feline hyperthyroidism, which is significantly more common than feline diabetes.

Not saying it wasn't Diabetes, but Hyperthyroidism seems more likely.

Re: Transfusion of brain fluid from young mice improves memory in old mice

#108

this above article is kind of inflammatory, however, this paper is incredibly interesting. I read it this morning and the concept of changing CSF in order to have an increase in oligodendrocyte progenitor cell proliferation and differentiation is such a creative idea; a lot of the idea has focused on increasing flow in order to move waste, etc with csf. I think this concept that CSF is also acting as an important mec…

Modifying CSF turnover is not particularly novel, but I do think it is generally overlooked. CSF production cycling is greatly reduced in the elderly and and there are a lot of connections to memory diseases such as alzheimers. A few medical device startups have attacked the problem with promising results. Unfortunately, VC and national funding orgs aren't particularly interested in device based solutions because pil…

yes yes I know that increasing CSF flow is not that novel (anymore e.g. last couple of years). you can increase it with cerebral blood flow, and you can do this with sleep, respiration, visual stimuli, etc.

however, the ideas of 1) replacing csf from young to older mice and 2) the idea that there are factors in CSF that are being delivered to other areas of the brain and promoting cell proliferation: that's pretty novel.

all of the literature right now points to csf in terms of waste clearance and csf is painted as almost a river that picks up components and moves waste (e.g. amyloid beta) from the periarterial areas in the parenchyma and then out through the perivenous areas into the lymphatic system. and this means that the idea of delivery of promoting factors is really interesting.

Re: Transfusion of brain fluid from young mice improves memory in old mice

#109
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't my area of expertise at all. A personal experience that comes to mind is when my childhood cat developed kidney disease. She drank plenty of water, urinated excessively, and her blood still became toxic without regular (~daily) intervention in the form of adding saline to her blood intravenously. Like a light switch she'd resume normal life after the saline bag emptied into her blood, then slowly become il…

Was the cat checked for diabetes? Excessively drinking water, excessive urination, and renal failure are all co-morbidities for cats. Either way, kudos for helping them.

Honestly I don't really know what all was checked. We brought her into the vet when she wasn't eating and behaving lethargically, they said her kidneys were failing and we'd have to bring her in regularly for saline bags or learn to administer them ourselves.

Re: Transfusion of brain fluid from young mice improves memory in old mice

#110
post #13

Haven't similar things been observed with blood transfusions of young blood into the elderly, which was then found to actually be unnecessary - even just diluting the blood with something neutral and clean produced similar results. "The solution to pollution is dilution"

All the more reason to donate blood.

Actually it was nothing to do with adding/removing blood, the treatment worked with synthetic serum albumin[1].

[1] https://www.lifespan.io/news/recombinant-serum-albumin-incre...

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