I took another look at the study and noticed that
Surprisingly, we observed no significant BA differences at time point 3 compared to sham in any group, suggesting potential compensatory mechanisms that mitigate the anti-aging effects after multiple sessions
Afaict, they took samples before session 1, 4 and 6, corresponding to time points 1, 2 and 3. The quote above indicates there is actually no benefit to TPE, or at least, you want to stop after 3 sessions. I wonder if this is a limitation of the sample size or if it truly indicates a null result here. IMO the study is written in a way that makes it sound better than it actually is by consistently referring to the benefits at time point 2, despite the end result being no better than sham. I suppose saying it didn’t work by the end of the study only takes one sentence so that’s what they put (as quoted above).
I think they really should have taken samples at least a month after the final session, I’m actually a bit perplexed as to why they would go through all of this effort and cost without doing some, presumably relatively cheaper, final testing. I also don’t understand why they did the 6th session at all if they only took samples before the 6th session (for time point 3). Perhaps I’m missing something here?
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Here’s an interesting small study done on plasma donation comparing the results to TPE
Takeaways:
- Frequent plasma donation may have similar results to TPE, at least for some proteins, but not all.
- Circadian variation of the proteomics has a large impact on the results. Studies must control for the time of day that blood is drawn for testing.
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Post them when you get them.