When does a treatment stop being an experiment and become something a doctor will simply give you? This site tracks the treatments that would each have to cross that line before medicine reaches a turning point: the year it starts adding more than a year of healthy life for every year that passes. A treatment only counts towards that turning point once it is in use with patients, so the line matters, and on 17 October 2026 I moved one treatment across it.
The treatment is plasma exchange. Plasma is the liquid part of the blood, and the procedure takes it out and replaces it with salt water and a blood protein called albumin. Hospitals have used it for decades for other illnesses. In a trial reported in 2020, 347 people with Alzheimer’s disease took part, and those given plasma exchange every month for over a year declined more slowly on tests of daily functioning than those given a sham, a procedure that only looks the same. Not every measure the trial tracked moved, but it was a real result in people, enough for the site to count the treatment as tried in people.
To count as in use with patients, the site asks for one of two things: a regulator, the government body that approves medicines, approves the procedure for an age-related condition; or a named clinic gives it for that purpose as ordinary care and says so publicly (the treatment’s page sets out the test). No regulator has, so the question was whether a clinic had said so.
What Happened
On 12 March 2026 the company that supplies the programme, Grifols, said in a press release that the Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona had been running a plasma-exchange programme for people with Alzheimer’s disease since 2021. The site’s automated weekly search of the news found that release on 17 October and left the decision to me, because a supplier saying what a clinic does is not the clinic saying it.
The same day, an outside review of the site’s evidence found the clinic’s own words. On 27 April 2026 the centre published on its own page that 71 patients had completed its fifteen-month programme “under routine clinical practice conditions”, results its team presented at the 2026 meeting of the American Society for Apheresis, the professional society for treatments that filter the blood. On 17 October I ruled that this meets the test, and moved plasma exchange to in use with patients.
There is a fair case against, and it stays on the treatment’s page. The centre’s announcement is of a conference talk, not a paper checked by other scientists. And the society’s own guidelines place plasma exchange for Alzheimer’s disease in the category of treatments whose role is not yet established. I weighed both and still ruled that it counts.
The move is dated 27 April 2026, the day the centre published, and not 2021, when the supplier says the programme began. The test asks the clinic to say it, and the clinic’s page does not give that year. I am strict about this because a treatment never moves back down on this site, so a mistake could not be quietly undone.
What It Changes, and What It Does Not
Plasma exchange became the sixth of the site’s 44 treatments in use with patients, up from five (the treatment’s page). The site sorts its treatments into eight groups, seven for the kinds of damage that ageing does and one for measuring it, and a group counts as dealt with once two of its treatments are in use with patients. Colchicine, a drug that acts only on inflammation, was already approved to prevent heart attacks. With plasma exchange as the second, the site’s middle estimate for when the group for inflammation and the body’s messaging is dealt with moved from 2042 to 2026, this year.
The estimate for the turning point did not move. It stayed at 2058, because the turning point cannot come until the slowest group is dealt with, and inflammation was not the slowest (how the year is worked out). Counting the other decisions I made on the review that day, the site’s chance that the turning point comes before 2050 went from 3.35 to 4.09 per cent (what changed, day by day).
It does not mean plasma exchange slows ageing. The Barcelona programme treats one disease of old age, and no regulator anywhere has approved the procedure for ageing.
The next stage is wide use: offered to the general public in at least one country and taken up by many people. The site’s estimate is 2045 at the most likely, no earlier than 2032 and as late as 2090 (the treatment’s page). The most likely year assumes wide use waits for a second controlled trial, in Alzheimer’s disease or in healthy older people, to confirm the 2020 result.
19 October 2026: this post was rewritten in plainer words; no fact or figure in it changed (what changed, day by day).
The record: Replacing the liquid part of a person's blood slows an age-related disease · the reading of 17 October 2026 · the story entry.
Sources: Ace Alzheimer Center Barcelona, its announcement of 27 April 2026 · Grifols, its press release of 12 March 2026 · Boada and others, the 2020 trial of plasma exchange in Alzheimer's disease · The outside review of 17 October 2026 and the decisions made on it.
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