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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Can Chelation Therapy Help Prevent Heart Disease? Chelation therapy is a chemical process in which EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) is injected into the bloodstream to remove heavy metals and minerals from the body. It has a long history of use in clinical toxicology. Injected EDTA binds with the harmful metal and both are then eliminated from the body through the kidneys. Treatment of lead toxicity with chelation was first reported in the early 1950s. Some health professionals have since then used it to treat atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease, but its use has not been shown to be effective. In 2001, researchers from the University of Calgary reported that cardiac patients receiving chelation therapy fared no better than those who received placebo treatment. A 2005 systematic review indicated that controlled scientific studies did not support chelation therapy for heart disease. Very small trials and uncontrolled descriptive studies have reported benefits while larger controlled studies have found results no better than placebo. The Montana Board of Medical Examiners issued a position paper in 2009 concluding that chelation therapy has no proven efficacy in the treatment of cardiovascular disease, and it could be harmful for some patients. According to a government-funded trial published online March 27, 2013 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), removing metals from the body through chelation therapy has little effect on the long-term health of people who have previously suffered a heart attack.
The trial did not find any difference in the number of participants who died in the 4 and half years after they received either so-called chelation therapy or drug-free placebo infusions. There was only a small decrease in the proportion that required stents or other heart procedures following chelation therapy. Researchers from Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach and other institutions randomly assigned 1708 adults, aged 50 and above with a prior heart attack at least 6 weeks prior, to receive 40 rounds of chelation therapy or drug-free placebo infusions, each lasted about 3 hours, at 134 clinics in the United States and Canada. For the next 4 and half years, they tracked study participants to see who developed heart disease. No difference was found based on treatment in the proportion of people who suffered a second heart attack, between 6 and 8 percent, and the proportion who had a stroke, about 1 percent. Nevertheless, people who had chelation therapy did slightly better when data on strokes, heart attacks, deaths, heart surgeries and hospitalizations were combined: 26 percent of them had one of those outcomes (most often surgery), as compared to 30 percent of the placebo group. In their paper, the researchers admitted that the evidence they found was too weak to support using chelation therapy in the average heart attack patients though their findings could be used to help design additional studies. They will not recommend chelation to everyone recovering from a heart attack. However, they argued that if patients were very ill and standard medical therapy had not worked, then they might discuss with patients about chelation. There were many participants dropped out of the study (more than 1 in 6) making the trial undependable. Some health professionals described the findings as unreliable, calling the chelation therapy a form of quackery that some vulnerable patients look to when they are facing bypass surgery. They are puzzled why people tend to discard established therapies that are workable to some sort of therapy that does not work. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not approved chelation therapy for treatment of heart disease. In 2010, the FDA warned companies to stop marketing chelation for autism and cardiovascular disease as well as other untested and unapproved uses. Even in low doses, chelation therapy does carry some negative effects, including high blood pressure, headache, rash, and low blood sugar. Children, pregnant women, and people who have heart or kidney failure should never have chelation therapy at any dose.
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