INTRODUCTION
Since ancient times, humans have fought a still-unwinnable battle against aging and time. The search for long-lasting lives has become an obsession for mankind, but with the wish for longer life, a wish for better life has also developed, and beauty is doubtlessly an important part of it. Autologous sera, though developed in 1990’s, still have great potential. The possibility of processing our own blood in order to obtain precious substances for a particular purpose has opened the gates for the development of new treatments, indications, and techniques. This special serum with high concentrations of growth factors and anti-inflammatory cytokines was obtained after processing the blood obtained from an ordinary arm vein extraction and by incubating it in a special syringelike device. Other serum treatments have already been reported in the past. Therapeutic effects were reported for several indications, including antiserum treatment (Emil von Behring, 1854-1917), applications for eye pathologies,1 intramuscular injections,2 and epidural perineural injections.3 The long history of serum applications accounts for the safety of such treatments.
When humans age, smoothness, gloss, and skin tropism (among others) are drastically reduced and skin physiological patterns become altered: a) transepidermal water loss augments and hydration drops, and b) elasticity and other mechanical properties of the skin such as distensibility, firmness, and viscous recoil (which are roughly a consequence of the interaction of elastic and collagen fibers with the rest of skin constituents) diminish, since aged fibroblasts synthesize suboptimal fibers that work improperly and get reorganized following nonphysiological patterns.
When the growth factor "map" obtained with this serum was analyzed, it was quickly understood why it was so coherent to propose it for skin beauty enhancement and for antiaging treatments. This autologous antiaging serum (AAS) has a unique potential to be able to enhance skin beauty by direct impact on its cells and structures, by reducing proinflammatory cytokine plasma concentrations, and by augmenting growth factor local concentrations.
Aging Theories
Many biological theories claim to be the full explanation of the aging process, but it is well accepted that none of them provides full evidence to understand aging as a whole. The truth probably hides beneath the combination of major aspects of some of them. Among the most relevant: cell replication limit/telomere theory,4 cell cycle/reproductive theory,5 accumulated waste theory,6 wear-and-tear theory,7 DNA theories (error catastrophe,8 genetic regulation,9 terminal differentiation,10 genome instability,11 somatic mutation,12 mitochondrial decline),13 disease theory,14 free radical theory,15 cross-linkage theory,16 immunological theory,17 evolution theories.18
Of importance for this study is the inflammation theory, sometimes referred as a subtheory of the free radical theory. It states that constantly increasing proinflammatory cytokines are a
