Is Therapeutic Plasma Exchange legal in Canada?

A standard hospital procedure that takes out plasma and puts a blood protein called albumin back. A 347-person trial in Alzheimer disease hit one of its two main goals. Two small 2025 trials of ageing markers came to opposite conclusions.

Therapeutic plasma exchange is not new as a procedure. It is a standard treatment in brain, blood and kidney medicine, done with approved machines.

How it works: Two rival explanations, neither settled in people. The thinning idea, worked out in mice, says that taking out some old plasma waters down proteins that build up with age and resets the body's signals, and that what you put back barely matters.

Approval history: Therapeutic plasma exchange is an established medical procedure. A machine cleared for the job removes plasma, the liquid part of blood, and replaces it. It has accepted uses in some nerve, blood and kidney diseases. It is not approved anywhere for ageing, for lowering biological age or for Alzheimer disease.

Allows a drug to be sold by issuing a Notice of Compliance and a Drug Identification Number (DIN). A compound that is not allowed for sale cannot legally be sold for use in people. Bringing in prescription drugs for your own use is also limited.

The legal category above is how The Longevity Archive reads Health Canada, Health Products and Food Branch listings for Therapeutic Plasma Exchange on the reviewed date. It is not a legal opinion. Rules change. Bringing a compound into the country, prescribing it and owning it can each be treated differently. Check with the agency before you act on anything here.

Check Health Canada directly

Whether Therapeutic Plasma Exchange is banned in sport is set by the World Anti-Doping Code and by military rules, not by its legal status in Canada. Before you compete or get tested, look up Therapeutic Plasma Exchange by name on the Prohibited List, or look up a named product in Global DRO. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, category S0 bans, at all times, any drug-like substance that meets two tests. No other section of the List covers it. And no government health regulator anywhere has a current approval for it as a treatment in people. Many substances that are approved somewhere are banned by name in another section. So approval does not mean a substance is allowed in sport.

• WADA Prohibited List
• Global DRO (check a named product)
• USADA (US athletes)
• Operation Supplement Safety (US service members)

The rules you compete or serve under decide this, not this page.