Caitlin Raymond: Can Therapeutic Plasma Exchange Reduce Microplastics?
Caitlin Raymond, Assistant Professor of Pathology and Transfusion Medicine at University of Wisconsin-Madison, shared a post on LinkedIn:
”Microplastics are everywhere in the headlines right now; when a 2026 paper crossed my desk claiming therapeutic plasma exchange can lower your circulating microplastic burden, I wanted to believe it.
I practice in apheresis. I’d love a legitimate new indication.
Then I read the paper.
The topline result actually reverses at low starting burdens — patients with the fewest circulating particles going in had over three times as many afterward.
The likely culprit isn’t biology, it’s the apheresis tubing itself shedding plastic into the circuit faster than the procedure removes it.
Add an unvalidated, proprietary assay with undisclosed performance data, a commercial TPE provider with 7 of 13 authors on the payroll, and zero clinical outcome data — and what looks like a promising new indication is actually a case study in why laboratory medicine exists: to stop a test from dictating treatment before anyone’s verified it measures what it claims to.
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