Blood as a Youth Potion

Could techniques that restore markers of youth to old mice have any effect on human subjects?

Blood Transfusion Experiment in Mice

Cellular senescence, a "state in which cells stop growing and dividing," contributes to the aging of various tissues in the body. In one experiment, two mice were surgically spliced together, like Frankensteinian conjoined twins. The younger mouse showed signs of aging, while the old mouse gained some of the young one's youthful health. To distinguish blood-borne factors from other effects, the blood of old mice has been transfused into young ones, causing the recipients to show "increased expression of senescence biomarkers in the muscle, kidney, and liver." They also suffered loss of strength and endurance.

Senolytic agents, "drugs that eliminate senescent cells," when infused into the blood of the old mice, reduced the ill effects on the victims of the age-to-youth transfusions.

Conversely, transfusing the blood of young mice into old ones "decreased tissue damage in the liver, kidney, and muscles of old mice."

These studies remind me of a classic quasi-vampire story from 1896 (one year before DRACULA), "Good Lady Ducayne," by Mary Braddon. The wealthy title character has a reputation for being generous to her young, female paid companions. But why have they all mysteriously wasted away and died? It turns out that her villainous personal physician has been drugging the girls with chloroform and secretly draining their blood to transfuse it into their elderly employer, maintaining vigor unnatural for her advanced years. This method of forestalling the ravages of age sounds like obsolete pseudo-science. How surprising to learn that such a method might actually work, to some extent at least.

Unfortunately, neither senolytics nor the vital fluids of vigorous young people can presently act as a fountain of youth for human patients. If healthy blood could serve that purpose, negative social consequences such as exploitation of the incarcerated or the poor could result. Money or reductions in prison time might offer an irresistible temptation to "donate" blood to the privileged classes.

Special people whose blood confers health or immortality form a long-standing science fiction trope. For instance, THE IMMORTAL, a 1969-70 TV series, based on short stories by SF writer James Gunn, features a man whose transfused blood heals a dying millionaire. However, the effect wears off after a while. Naturally the rich man wants to keep the other one as a living blood bank, so the potential victim goes on the run. in Tananarive Due's African Immortals novels, beginning with MY SOUL TO KEEP, the Immortals of the series title keep their nature secret to avoid being hunted for their blood, through which their immortality can be passed on. If a human family or subspecies with rejuvenating blood existed, it seems all too likely that they might be imprisoned and bled for the benefit of the elite.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Artificial Blood

Here's an article about an artificial blood substitute being developed by a research physician from the University of Maryland School of Medicine:

Artificial Blood One Step Closer

It's not meant to replace regular blood transfusions, but as a supply in emergencies for purposes such as to "stabilize a patient’s blood pressure or facilitate blood clotting." The goal is "to develop a bio-synthetic whole-blood product that can be freeze-dried for easy portability, storage, and reconstitution." Instant blood, just add water! The main ingredient will be "ErythroMer, the artificial blood product made by KaloCyte, a company co-founded by Dr. Doctor in 2016 with bioengineer and synthetic chemist Dipanjan Pan, PhD, MSc, professor in nanomedicine at Penn State University, and Philip Spinella, MD, a military transfusion medicine expert at the University of Pittsburgh." The two other main components are "synthetic platelets and freeze-dried plasma."

Here's a Wikipedia entry about various kinds of blood substitutes:

Blood Substitute

The most difficult function to duplicate, as well as the most important, is the transportation of oxygen. Several different varieties of manufactured hemoglobin have been tried. Another potential alternative might be growing red blood cells from stem cells in vitro.

As a fan, scholar, and writer of vampire fiction, naturally I wonder whether the University of Maryland's artificial blood product could nourish vampires. Could it serve the function of True Blood in the Sookie Stackhouse series, allowing vampires to "come out of the coffin" as accepted members of society? Whole blood includes many components besides those found in present-day blood substitutes. Which of those ingredients are necessary for vampires to thrive? If the growth of stem-cell-generated hemoglobin could be perfected, that would seem the best product for both medical uses and vampire nutrition.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

A Taste for Blood

This week I donated blood, and as usual in that situation, I thought about vampires. (Doesn't everybody?) If vampires have razor-sharp teeth that painlessly produce tiny incisions in the skin, maybe with anesthetic in their saliva like vampire bats, they wouldn't need to leave conspicuous twin fang marks that the donor has to cover with a scarf. (Vampire bats, by the way, make incisions, not punctures.) The puncture produced by the blood donation needle, at least in my experience, is so minute that it's hardly noticeable after the bleeding stops. Usually it has almost disappeared by the next day. The procedure typically extracts a unit of blood in less than ten minutes. Afterward, the donor isn't prostrated from blood loss; the worst I ever feel is thirsty and slightly tired for a couple of hours at most. So much for the dramatic image of a victim languishing on the verge of imminent death.

That's if the vampire takes only "as much as would fill a wineglass," like Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count Saint-Germain. He's a supernatural vampire, though. For those creatures, we can postulate that they're really nourished more by the life-essence than by the physical components of blood, so they don't need to ingest a large volume of it. Likewise, the absurd movie scenes in which a vampire grabs a victim, bites his her or neck for a couple of minutes, and leaves a body completely drained of blood could be handwaved as magic. No awkward questions as to where all that liquid fits into the monster's body. But suppose vampires evolve naturally and have to conform to the limits of biology? As the vampire Dr. Weyland in Suzy McKee Charnas's THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY rhetorically asks, "How would nature design a vampire?"

How do vampire bats cope with a diet high in protein and minerals but not much else, including a potentially toxic level of iron? This article explains how vampire bats' digestion and physiology have adapted to make them the only mammals able to survive entirely on blood:

Why Do Vampire Bats Have a Taste for Blood?

For one thing, they live in symbiosis with gut microbes that synthesize nutrients not found in their restricted diets. They have other fascinating adaptations for their predatory lifestyle as well, including anticoagulants as well as painkillers in their saliva and the heat-seeking ability to perceive infrared radiation marking hot spots on the bodies of their prey. We could give our naturally evolved humanoid vampires these traits. My own fictional vampires get their bulk nourishment from animal blood and milk rather than feeding heavily on human donors, whose life-energy they need to remain healthy. Still, I fudge the total amount they require with discreet handwavium. Weyland in Charnas's novel gets "good mileage per calorie," and I tacitly assume any natural vampire would have to operate that way.

Unfortunately, in real life vampire bats suffer from an inconvenient drawback as models for romantic haunters of the night. So much blood volume consists of water that the bat has to consume half its own weight to ingest enough calories to support life. Then, of course, it has to get rid of that excess liquid just to reduce its weight enough to be able to fly. Therefore, during and after feeding the bat urinates copiously. Not glamorous at all, alas. So the writer inventing a naturally evolved humanoid vampire typically avoids discussing that problem. (In THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, the blood-heavy bat's plight is mentioned, but that unsavory topic isn't covered in the explanation of how Weyland feeds and digests.)

I'm currently reading a Japanese novel titled IRINA THE VAMPIRE COSMONAUT, set in an alternate-world version of the 1960s space race. Members of Irina's species have fangs, rely mainly on milk for nourishment, have superhuman senses of smell but can't taste most foods, are sensitive to sunlight but not destroyed by it, lead a nocturnal lifestyle, and can endure cold better than humans but are more vulnerable to heat. They drink blood on ritual occasions but don't seem to require it for survival.

The ways authors rationalize science-fiction vampires fascinate me. Some striking examples include, besides THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY, George R. R. Martin's FEVRE DREAM, Jacqueline Lichtenberg's THOSE OF MY BLOOD, Octavia Butler's FLEDGING, and S. M. Stirling's Shadowspawn trilogy (A TAINT IN THE BLOOD and two sequels). I analyze these and many other works in that subgenre in my nonfiction book DIFFERENT BLOOD: THE VAMPIRE AS ALIEN.

Different Blood

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Blood, glorious blood (Tick Season is Upon Us)

Have you ever had sexual contact with anyone who was born in, or lived in Africa?
If so, you probably cannot give blood in America.

In the past three years have you been outside the United States?
Maybe you cannot give blood.

Notice the racial profiling here:
"To increase protection of the U.S. blood supply, we continue to recommend that you defer blood and plasma donors who have traveled or resided in the U.K. for a cumulative period of three or more months from the beginning of 1980 through the end of 1996."

http://www.fda.gov/downloads/BiologicsBloodVaccines/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/UCM213415.pdf

Why is this? Because, as of March 2010, 216 people (ever) have been diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, 169 of whom lived in the U.K.

There is no exemption for British vegetarians. That interests me.

Conversely, when it comes to a much more quickly devastating blood-borne illness known as "Texas cattle fever" and also as "Nantucket fever", there are no blanket restrictions on blood donating based on people who have lived in or visited Texas or Massachussetts. 

The questionnaire merely asks "Have you ever had babesiosis?"
I cannot help wondering how many would-be blood donors know what babesiosis is, let alone whether or not they have ever had it. Also, what if they know they have had piroplasmosis, but the questionnaire does not ask about piroplasmosis?


According to a 2011 article in DISCOVERY, over the last 30 years, blood transfusions caused at least 159 cases of babesiosis, twenty-eight of whom died soon after their blood transfusions.

Also, interestingly "Currently, no licensed tests for screening U.S. blood donors for evidence of Babesia infection are available. Persons who test positive for Babesia infection should be advised to refrain indefinitely from donating blood."


You get babesiosis from deer ticks. The worst part of the year for being attacked by ticks and also by mosquitoes is May, June, July. Break out the repellant.

For my Vampire-Romance writing colleagues....  Does DEET repel your vampires? 

Here's a scan of the Blood Donor History Questionnaire. It seems like rich source material for Vamp Writers. What do you think? Alas, though, there is no question pertaining to vampirism or cannibalism.

Interesting questions!
Footnote:
Babesia is a protozoan parasite of which Babesia microti and Babesia divergens are the two species most frequently found to infect humans. Infections from other species of Babesia have been documented in humans, but are not regularly seen. Babesiosis is also known as piroplasmosis. Due to historical misclassifications, this protozoan was labeled with many names that are no longer used. Common names of the disease include Texas cattle fever, redwater fever, tick fever, and Nantucket fever.

The seven states with well-established foci of zoonotic transmission (Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin) are referred to as Babesia microti–endemic states 
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6127a2.htm


All the best,
Rowena Cherry
SPACE SNARK™ http://www.spacesnark.com/