Research Chelation Therapy

Doctors Studying Chelation to Remove Heavy Metals: Fibromyalgia & Chronic Fatigue Syndrome News
ImmuneSupport.com

05-26-2004

By Margaret Ann MiilleFor years, using chelation to treat heart disease has been pretty much an act of faith. The intravenous process, which removes heavy metals and minerals from the blood, has long had a following among practitioners of alternative medicine who say its cleansing abilities work on arteries, too.

But mainstream doctors have rarely put stock in the treatment because there’s only sparse scientific evidence that it helps treat heart disease, the leading cause of death for American men and women.

“Chelation, so far, has been a little like religion: either you believe in it or you don’t,” said Randy Hartman, a cardiologist at the Heart & Vascular Center of Sarasota [Florida].

Now the largest study of its kind — the “Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy,” or TACT — is being launched to end the debate. The Heart & Vascular Center and Bradenton’s [Florida] Integrated Healing Arts recently joined the five-year, $30 million project, which is being funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The clinical trial will involve nearly 2,400 patients at more than 100 research sites nationwide. The federal Food and Drug Administration has approved chelation as a treatment for lead poisoning and toxicity from other heavy metals, but the federal agency hasn’t approved it for coronary artery disease.

Hartman, the principal TACT investigator at the Sarasota research site, says he doesn’t have a pat answer for patients asking if chelation would help them. Like most board-certified cardiologists, he prescribes traditional treatments: controlling high blood pressure and cholesterol with medication and lifestyle changes such as eating well, exercising and quitting smoking. More severe cases are treated with angioplasty or bypass surgery.

“This is something that needs to be studied so we can finally get some definitive answers,” Hartman said. “Does it help, who does it help and in what way does it help?”

Many have tried it

More than 800,000 Americans have undergone chelation therapy in the last 40 years, most of them for cardiovascular disease, says the American College of Advancement in Medicine.

The therapy involves an intravenous treatment using ethylene diamine tetra-acetic acid, a synthetic amino acid. TACT patients sit, generally in a recliner, for three hours at a stretch while receiving the infusion.

Evidence on how well chelation works remains largely anecdotal because of the size and scope of chelation studies to date.

The next-largest one conducted in Denmark a few years ago had only 153 patients, said Gervasio A. Lamas, director of cardiovascular research and academic affairs at Mount Sinai Medical Center-Miami Heart Institute in Miami Beach. Lamas wrote the NIH proposal for TACT, which was approved in 2002, and he’s the study’s chairman.

Earlier clinical trials gave doctors little reason to support chelation because they failed to show significant differences between those heart disease patients who tried the therapy compared with those who didn’t, he said.

Even alternative medicine practitioners, who are generally much more enthusiastic about chelation, found the same studies inconclusive because the numbers of patients involved were so small.

“I don’t think there is significant evidence for or against chelation,” said Lamas, a cardiologist who doesn’t use the therapy at his practice. “I think there is a swirling controversy about something on which there is little data. There is not enough data for a clinician to make a decision.”

TACT will enroll 2,372 patients who are 50 or older, have had a heart attack, but no chelation, within the last five years.

They cannot have smoked within the last three months or have had heart surgery within the last six months.

Half will be randomly selected to receive a standardized chelation solution; the rest will get a placebo. It’s a double-blind study in which neither the patients nor the doctors will know who is getting the placebo and who is getting the treatment.

Patients will undergo a series of 40 infusions — the first 30 are weekly — and take vitamin supplements. They will be monitored until the end of the study to gauge chelation’s clinical benefits or side effects.

The study will end in the spring of 2008, five years after the first patient was enrolled.

“Whatever the results, you can’t deny them,” Lamas said. “The study is well-designed and it has enough patients in it so that whatever we get will have to be taken into account by all cardiology and alternative medicine, whether it is positive or negative.”

Cooperation from the alternative medical community was essential to the project because its members are the most familiar with chelation, Lamas said.

“They feel that they have been practicing a treatment that has benefited thousands of patients, that conventional medicine refuses to recognize what is obvious to them.”

Some are convinced

Jeff Morrison, one of four chiropractors at Bradenton’s Integrated Healing Arts, fits that bill. As site coordinator for TACT, he’s sure the study will prove what he says he’s known all along.

“I think it’s going to show that chelation therapy is very efficient for cardiovascular disease. I don’t think it’s going to replace any current treatments out there, but it will add a very important tool for cardiovascular diseases,” he said. “It will open a whole new treatment. … It will save a lot of lives.”

Chelation has been used since 1998 at Morrison’s practice, a multidisciplinary operation that also has massage therapists, physical therapists, an acupuncturist and a hypnotherapist. There, chelation is used mostly to treat patients with cardiovascular disease.

To a lesser extent, it’s given to people with heavy metal toxicity, which manifests itself in such symptoms as fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Reluctance by doctors to use chelation may be partly fueled by their desire to perform more profitable operations, Morrison said. Insurance usually only pays for chelation for lead poisoning or toxicity. It typically costs others from $80 to $120 for a single infusion.

Chelation is free to patients in the study.

Eighty-two TACT sites nationwide are considered “activated,” including 15 in Florida. About 170 patients have enrolled across the country. Integrated Healing Arts has one signed up and the Heart & Vascular Center has six. That includes Sarasota’s Frank Laudano, an active 70-year-old retiree who’s had two heart attacks and one angioplasty. Other treatments, such as strapping inflatable cuffs to his body to increase blood flow, helped him feel stronger for a while.

Laudano got his first infusion nearly two weeks ago.

“My heart is such that I’m not a good candidate for open heart surgery,” he said. “I’m a strong believer that it will work. If it doesn’t work, I have the satisfaction of contributing to medical science, and other people may benefit. “It may be my children.”

Source: heraldtribune.com (Southwest Florida)

Drug error, not chelation therapy, killed boy, expert says

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

By Karen Kane, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
One of the nation’s foremost experts in chelation therapy said she has determined “without a doubt” that it was medical error, and not the therapy itself, that led to the death of a 5-year-old boy who was receiving it as a treatment for autism.

Dr. Mary Jean Brown, chief of the Lead Poisoning Prevention Branch of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said yesterday that Abubakar Tariq Nadama died Aug. 23 in his Butler County doctor’s office because he was given the wrong chelation agent.

“It’s a case of look-alike/sound-alike medications,” she said yesterday. “The child was given Disodium EDTA instead of Calcium Disodium EDTA. The generic names are Versinate and Endrate. They sound alike. They’re clear and colorless and odorless. They were mixed up.”

Both types of EDTA are synthetic amino acids that latch onto heavy metals in the bloodstream.

Dr. Brown said she obtained the child’s autopsy report on behalf of the CDC after reading an article about the death in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She said it didn’t take long to figure out what had happened.

Essentially, Tariq died from low blood calcium. Without enough calcium — a metal — in the blood, the heart stops beating. Dr. Brown said the Disodium EDTA the child was given as a chelation agent “acted as a claw that pulled too much calcium” from his blood.

“The blood calcium level was below 5 [milligrams]. That’s an emergency event,” she said.

Officials from the state police, the district attorney’s office and the coroner’s office will meet soon to decide whether to hold an inquest into the child’s death and whether it should remain listed as accidental.

Dr. Brown said the same mix-up happened in two other recent cases: a 2-year-old girl in Texas who died in May during chelation for lead poisoning and a woman from Oregon who died three years ago while receiving chelation for clogged arteries.

Dr. Brown said that in each case, the blood calcium level was below 5 milligrams. Normal is between 7 and 9.

The correct chelation agent — Calcium Disodium EDTA — would not have pulled the calcium from the bloodstream, she said.

The Butler County coroner’s office confirmed last week that Tariq had died as a result of his chelation treatment, but the findings that were released didn’t indicate whether the treatment had been improperly administered.

Dr. Brown said chelation was once a common and necessary therapy that was used on children and adults alike for lead poisoning. Chelation means administering an agent into the bloodstream that causes heavy metals in the body to cling to it and then be excreted in urine.

Though its only approved use, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, is for lead poisoning, Dr. Brown said she is aware that it is used by some people for other medical problems, ranging from clogged arteries to autism.

She said there have been no reputable medical trials demonstrating the effectiveness of chelation as a therapy for anything but lead poisoning. But if it were administered accurately, the procedure would be harmless.

She said it is well known within the medical community that Disodium EDTA should never be used as a chelation agent. She quoted from a 1985 CDC statement: “Only Calcium Disodium EDTA should be used. Disodium EDTA should never be used … because it may induce fatal hypocalcemia, low calcium and tetany.”

“There is no doubt that this was an unintended use of Disodium EDTA. No medical professional would ever have intended to give the child Disodium EDTA,” Dr. Brown said.

Tariq was brought to the United States from England last spring by his mother, Marwa, for the chelation therapy. He was in the Portersville, Butler County, office of Dr. Roy Eugene Kerry when he went into cardiac arrest.

In recent months, chelation treatments of a wide variety ranging from IV to oral to topical have been gaining popularity for autistic children due to anecdotal information from parents indicating a reduction in symptoms. The underlying belief is that autism is caused by a sensitivity to heavy metals in the bloodstream.

Howard Carpenter, executive director of the Advisory Board on Autism and Related Disorders — the largest autism advocacy group in the region — said the determination by Dr. Brown clears up the mystery surrounding Tariq’s death but not the uncertainty over chelation itself.

“Since this child died, there have been parents who are pro-chelation who have been very angry that there’s talk against it. On the other side, they say the death was a natural consequence of a dangerous activity. Maybe what happened to [Tariq] is explained, but we still don’t have a conclusion about whether chelation is an effective treatment for autism,” he said.

Tariq’s father is a medical doctor who practices in England.

Dr. Kerry could not be reached for comment. A board-certified physician and surgeon, he advertises himself as an ear, nose and throat doctor who also specializes in allergies and environmental medicine.

NIH Launches Large Clinical Trial on EDTA Chelation Therapy for Coronary Artery Disease The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have launched the first large-scale clinical trial to determine the safety and efficacy of EDTA chelation therapy in individuals with coronary artery disease, the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States.The 5-year Trial To Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) will involve over 2,300 patients at more than 100 research sites across the country.

“The public health imperative to undertake a definitive study of chelation therapy is clear. The widespread use of chelation therapy in lieu of established therapies, the lack of adequate prior research to verify its safety and effectiveness, and the overall impact of coronary artery disease convinced NIH that the time is right to launch this rigorous study,” said Stephen E. Straus, M.D., NCCAM Director.

Over 800,000 patient visits were made for chelation therapy in the United States in 1997. Chelation therapy involves the use of EDTA (ethylene diamine tetra-acetic acid), a synthetic amino acid that is administered intravenously (through the veins). EDTA, which effectively speeds removal of heavy metals and minerals such as lead, iron, copper, and calcium from the blood, is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use in treating lead poisoning and toxicity from other heavy metals. Although not approved by the FDA to treat coronary artery disease, some physicians and alternative medicine practitioners have recommended EDTA chelation as a way to treat this disorder.

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a type of heart disease in which the coronary arteries (vessels that supply oxygen-carrying blood to the heart) become blocked by deposits of a fatty substance called plaque. As plaque builds, the arteries become narrower and less oxygen and nutrients are transported to the heart for proper function. CAD can lead to serious health problems such as angina (pain caused by insufficient oxygen-carrying blood reaching the heart), and heart attack.

There are standard and well-proven ways to reduce the risks or complications of CAD. These include stopping smoking and controlling high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol through lifestyle changes and medication. More invasive procedures are used to treat symptomatic CAD including balloon angioplasty (dilation of a blocked artery to open it up) or coronary artery bypass surgery (using arteries or veins from other areas of the body to create detours for blood flow around areas of blockage in the heart artery).

“NCCAM’s leadership in initiating and supporting this study is to be commended,” said NHLBI Director Claude Lenfant, M.D. “It is important for heart disease patients to know whether we should add chelation therapy to the list of proven treatments for coronary artery disease. Scientific evidence is needed to resolve this issue. And only a large clinical trial can definitively answer the question of whether chelation treatment is truly safe and effective,” added Lenfant.

The randomized, double-blind study will enroll 2,372 patients, aged 50 or older who have had a heart attack. The $30 million study, led by Gervasio A. Lamas, M.D., director of cardiovascular research and academic affairs at Mount Sinai Medical Center-Miami Heart Institute in Miami Beach, Florida, will test whether EDTA chelation therapy and/or high-dose vitamin therapy is effective for the treatment of CAD. Vitamin and mineral supplements, consistent with the regimen used by practitioners who deliver EDTA chelation therapy, will be used in the study.

Following baseline assessments, about 1,186 patients will be randomly assigned to receive a standardized chelation solution, and about 1,186 patients will receive a placebo (dummy) solution. Each of these two groups will additionally be randomized to receive high-dose vitamin/mineral supplements versus low-dose vitamin/mineral supplements. Study participants will receive 30 weekly infusions of EDTA chelation therapy followed by 10 bimonthly infusions. All patients enrolled will be followed until the end of the study to observe any significant clinical benefits or side effects. The primary study endpoint (a marker of improvement) of this trial will be a composite of heart attack, stroke, hospitalization for angina (pain associated with CAD), coronary revascularization, and death. The study will also evaluate cardiac deaths, nonfatal heart attacks, health-related quality of life, and cost effectiveness, among other factors.

TACT includes a Data Coordinating Center led by Kerry Lee, Ph.D., and a Quality of Life Coordinating Center led by Daniel Mark, M.D., M.P.H., both at the Duke Clinical Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina. In addition, an independent Data Safety Monitoring Board will oversee the study.

Patient recruitment for the study is expected to begin in March 2003, after preparations are completed to enroll participants at the many study sites. Questions and answers about this study are located at The NIH Trial of EDTA Chelation Therapy for Coronary Artery Disease . Information about the study, locations, and enrollment will be available from the NCCAM Web site and from ClinicalTrials.gov, the NIH Web site for clinical trial information.

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) is dedicated to exploring complementary and alternative medical (CAM) practices in the context of rigorous science, training CAM researchers, and disseminating authoritative information to the public and professionals. For additional information, call NCCAM’s Clearinghouse toll free at 1-888-644-6226, or visit the NCCAM Web site at nccam.nih.gov .

The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) plans, conducts, and supports research related to the causes, prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of heart, blood vessel, lung, and blood diseases; and sleep disorders. For additional information, contact the NHLBI Health Information Center at 301-592-8573, or visit the NHLBI Web site at www.nhlbi.nih.gov .

Novel Chelation Therapy Shows Promise for Alzheimer’s

December 15, 2003 (Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation) — An innovative therapy using a drug called clioquinol showed some early promise in slowing the progressive memory loss of Alzheimer’s. Men and women with the disease who were given the medicine had less loss of cognitive skills than those who received a lookalike dummy pill, with no serious side effects. The benefits were most noticeable in those in the more severe stages of mental decline.

It is important to stress, however that these results are preliminary. Only a few dozen people participated in the study, which was conducted in Australia. Much more research needs to be done to determine if the drug is truly safe and effective against dementia . A larger trial, co-headed by Dr. Samuel Gandy, Chairman of the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation’s Scientific Advisory Board, is being planned for the United States.

In the current Australian trial, researchers from the University of Melbourne tested 36 participants with moderately severe Alzheimer’s disease. Half received a twice-daily medicine called clioquinol for 36 weeks. The other half got a lookalike dummy pill. All were given memory tests, as well as blood and physical exams, at regular intervals.

At the end of the study, those patients who had been receiving the medicine had higher scores on memory tests than those who had been getting a placebo drug. They also had lower blood levels of a toxic substance called beta- amyloid .

Most researchers believe beta- amyloid plays an important role in Alzheimer’s. The poison is thought to build up in the brains of people affected by the disease and contribute to the formation of sticky deposits called plaques, which choke off and kill healthy brain cells. The result is the progressive loss of memory and other vital thinking skills typical of Alzheimer’s.

Metal-Binding Antibiotic
Scientists believe that blocking the production or accumulation of beta-amyloid in the brain may prevent of slow the course of Alzheimer’s disease. Numerous drugs and vaccines are being developed in the hopes that they will curb the formation of beta-amyloid and thereby preserve healthy brain function and memory. In tests so far, however, none has yet been proven effective.

The medicine tested in the current trial, clioquinol, is an antibiotic, a type of drug commonly given to fight infections. But clioquinol has another unique property: It binds to certain metals — specifically zinc and copper — that circulate in the blood and cellular fluids. These metals are thought to interact with the toxin beta-amyloid and play a role in the formation of brain plaques.

Scientists refer to treatments such as clioquinol that block metals from interacting with other substances in the body as “chelation” (pronounced “key-LAY-shun”) therapies. Some alternative practitioners use another form of chelation therapy to treat hardening of the arteries and heart disease, although its benefits have not been proven and some mainstream physicians regard it as quackery.

The type of chelation therapy used in this study is a different technique tailored to the build-up of beta-amyloid that occurs in Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers speculate that zinc and copper accumulate in plaque deposits along with beta-amyloid. Removing these metals from the plaque with the drug clioquinol, they propose, causes the deposits to dissolve.

In earlier test tube studies, the drug had been shown to help dissolve the buildup of toxic beta-amyloid and plaque in human brain tissue. When the medication was given to mice that had been bred to develop an ailment resembling Alzheimer’s, the animals had much less buildup of beta-amyloid in their brains.

In the current study, the drug did appear to produce some modest benefits in people. “The findings support a proof of concept in humans that drug targeting metal beta-amyloid interactions can have a significant effect on beta-amyloid metabolism, and through this, a beneficial modification on the progression of Alzheimer’s disease,” the study authors write. “This class of [drugs] may also be considered for related conditions such as Parkinson disease.”

However, as with any emerging therapy, much more work needs to be done. The drug will have to be tested in much larger numbers of people to determine if it is truly safe and effective, a process that can take many years. Still, these early results are at least encouraging and offer a novel approach in the search for a cure.

A trial of clioquinol is being planned for 80 subjects in the United States, providing that safety concerns can be addressed. The American trial is based at the Farber Institute for Neurosciences of Thomas Jefferson University. It is being headed by Dr. Sam Gandy, Institute Director and Chair of the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation Scientific Advisory Board, and Dr. Barry Rovner, Institute Director of Clinical Research.

For more on the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and how researchers at the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation and working towards a cure, visit alzinfo.org at:

www.alzinfo.org/treatment/

By alzinfo.org.
Reviewed by Samuel E. Gandy, M.D., Ph.D., Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board, Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation.

Removing plaque from arteries
8/28/2004 12:00 PM
By: Ivanhoe Broadcast News

According to the National Institutes of Health, coronary artery disease (CAD), is the most common form of heart disease.

In CAD, the coronary arteries — the vessels that bring oxygen-rich blood to the tissues of the heart — are blocked by deposits of a fatty substance called plaque. As plaque builds, arteries become narrower and less oxygen and nutrients are transported to the heart.

The condition can lead to serious problems, such as angina (pain caused by not enough oxygen-carrying blood reaching the heart) and heart attack. Approximately 7 million Americans suffer from CAD. It is the leading cause of death among American men and women and more than 500,000 Americans die of CAD-related heart attacks each year.

The National Institutes of Health has launched the Trial To Assess Chelation Therapy. TACT is the first large-scale, multi-center study to determine the safety and efficacy of EDTA chelation therapy for individuals with coronary artery disease.

Chelation is a chemical process in which a substance is used to bind molecules, such as metals or minerals, and hold them tightly, so they can be removed from the body. In medicine, chelation has been scientifically proven to rid the body of excess or toxic metals. For example, a person who has lead poisoning may be given chelation therapy to bind and remove excess lead from the body before it can cause damage.

In the case of EDTA chelation therapy, the substance that binds and removes metals and minerals is EDTA (ethylene diamine tetra-acetic acid), a synthetic amino acid that is delivered intravenously.

EDTA was first used in the 1940s for the treatment of heavy metal poisoning. EDTA chelation removes heavy metals and minerals from the blood, such as lead, iron, copper, and calcium. It is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for use in treating lead poisoning and toxicity from other heavy metals.

Although it is not approved by the FDA to treat CAD, some physicians and alternative medicine practitioners have recommended EDTA chelation as a way to treat the condition. Some researchers say chelation therapy works by removing calcium from the arteries. The American College for Advancement in Medicine estimates more than 800,000 visits annually are made for chelation to treat CAD.

Cardiologist Harmony Reynolds, who heads the trial at New York University, said chelation is controversial mainly because patients often seek it in lieu of the many standard therapies available for coronary artery disease.

Clinical Cardiologist John Barnard, from St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital in New York City, calls chelation therapy “a worthless therapy that is expensive and time-consuming.”

The theory that chelation could treat calcified arteries doesn’t make sense, he said.

“The more calcium that is in the arteries, or the higher the calcium score, the more likely and the more severe the coronary artery disease is, so the theory always was if you get rid of the calcium then that should fix the arteries and the arteries should improve,” Barnard said.

Barnard said the problem is calcium buildup forms later after cholesterol so once the arteries are calcified, the damage is already done.

“If you start removing calcium from the body, the calcium in the arteries and the blood vessels compared to the calcium in the bones is really a drop in the bucket,” Barnard said.

The issue then becomes how to remove calcium from the arteries and not the bones, Barnard said.

Reduce mercury for health, environment

Published: Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Dental offices are among the last frontiers in the move to reduce mercury pollution in Vermont.

Probably half the mercury in use in the state can be found in people’s mouths. According to the state’s Advisory Committee on Mercury Pollution, it doesn’t have to be that way.

The advisory committee, which was created in 1998 to advise the Legislature, the governor and the public about mercury pollution, says mercury-containing dental amalgams cause needless public health and environmental concerns when there are viable nonmercury alternatives.

Exposure to mercury, a neurotoxin, is largely through consumption of contaminated fish. But since dental amalgams contain about 50 percent mercury, there is “worldwide concern about potential effects on health and the environment,” the advisory committee said in its annual report.

Last year, Gov. Jim Douglas signed into law a bill that bans the sale of mercury thermometers, thermostats, switches, relays, and measuring devices starting in 2007. Button cell batteries weren’t included in the ban, but earlier this month, the U.S. battery industry announced it would eliminate mercury from the batteries by 2011. Vermont’s legislation also required dental offices to install mercury amalgam separators to properly dispose of mercury waste from tooth fillings, and dentists were to follow “best management practices” to reduce mercury pollution.

Friday, the Department of Environmental Conservation takes final comments on establishing these best management practices. The mercury advisory committee is urging two key provisions be included in the practices: that dentists use mercury-free dental fillings when appropriate, and they provide patients more information about mercury amalgams and mercury-free fillings so consumers can make informed choices.

In 1998, the state passed a landmark mercury labeling law and signed onto a “mercury action plan” with other New England states and the eastern Canadian provinces to clean up their own back yards before demanding the same of the coal-fired power plants of the Midwest and other polluters from outside the region, where more than half of the mercury in Vermont’s environment originates.

Vermont has come a long way in reducing mercury pollution. Next stop: the dentist’s office.

To learn more Go to the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Web site at www.mercvt.org .

Critics, backers weigh in on chelation therapy

Avis Favaro, Elizabeth St. Philip, CTV News

Updated: Mon. Sep. 5 2005 9:02 PM ET

Desperate parents of some Canadian children with autism are turning to a radical and unproven treatment, using drugs to remove often disturbingly high levels of toxic environmental chemicals being found in their bodies.

They claim that it’s helping their once incommunicative, unsociable children act and learn more normally. But some doctors worry that these well meaning parents may be unwittingly endangering the health of their children with medications that carry serious risks.

For the parents of 9-year-old Nathan Cromie, the decision to try chelation therapy was made out of desperation. He was diagnosed with mild to moderate autism when he was three years old. He spent his days rocking back in forth, unable to respond to requests.

“His language was limited. He made noises … He would [make the same noises] over and over and over again,” said Nathan’s father Charles Cromie.

“I found him hard to manage. It was like talking to a wall. He wasn’t just unresponsive. He was unreachable,” said his mother, Julie Cromie.

Doctors told Julie and her husband Charles that Nathan would likely never be able to dress himself.

When they went looking for a cause for the autism, there was none. Treatment programs to help with Nathan’s language and behavioural problems had long waiting lists.

The Cromies tried a number of approaches, including special diets, vitamin supplements, self-administered programs to improve his attention skills. With each program, they saw small improvements but nothing they considered significant.

Then they discovered the theory that some children with autism may have a genetic abnormality that allows their bodies to store unusually high levels of toxic environmental chemicals, like mercury and lead.

It’s part of a highly-debated question that suggested mercury — which until recently was included as a preservative in childhood vaccines — caused autism. Studies have consistently found no link between vaccines and the illness.

But some doctors suspect environmental chemicals being dumped into the air and water may be playing a role in autism.

“In the autistic group, there seems to be a higher incidence of heavy metals — mercury, cadmium, lead, arsenic,” said Dr. Paul Cutler, a family doctor working in Burlington Ontario.

That’s why he and a small group of Canadian doctors are trying out chelation therapy on autistic children found to have high levels of metal.

Chelation therapy has been used for decades to treat metal poisoning. Drugs are administered in pill form or in intravenous solutions to bind to the metals in the body and them flush them. They are excreted in the urine.

“You don’t know until you remove the metals and then you see what improves,” explains Cutler.

One of Cutler’s patients is Nathan. His first blood and urine tests three years ago showed mercury levels that far exceeded recommended minimum limits and high levels of lead and arsenic.

According to Cutler, lead levels should be less than 20 micrograms per deciliter of urine. Nathan had over 100 micrograms. Mercury levels, meanwhile, should not be over 5 micrograms per deciliter; Nathan’s were in the 20s.

Where the chemicals came from, his parents don’t know. But they do know that as soon as Cutler began administering the chelation therapy, Nathan started making progress they had never seen before.

“Within a couple of weeks, it was like a penny dropped. All of a sudden, he wasn’t afraid to go to the toilet anymore,” said his mother Julie.

“You have to realize how dramatic that is for a parent. You have a six-year-old and it’s hard to find diapers,” said Charles.

Subsequent tests have shown that the levels of these chemicals in Nathan have been dropping, from 51 units of mercury to 5.4 in the latest test. Aluminum is all but gone in his system, although there are still significant levels of lead.

Autism occurs in 5 per 1,000 children, making it one of the most common childhood illnesses — more common than Type 1 diabetes and Down’s syndrome. There are treatments to improve behaviour and social skills. But there are often long waiting lists for therapy and not all children improve.

The chelation movement is in part being pushed because parents simply have few options in the standard medical world. Its advance is fuelled by anecdotal reports by parents who say it’s helped their children and by some preliminary studies.

But autism specialists aren’t impressed with the data so far and consider chelation dangerous.

“We absolutely do not have any of what I consider scientifically sound evidence that chelators are going to make a difference for children with autism,” said Dr. Wendy Roberts, who treats autistic children at the Bloorview MacMillan Children’s Centre in Toronto.

The drugs can cause damage to the liver and kidney, as well as to bone marrow.

Last month, a five-year-old autistic boy went into cardiac arrest and died after receiving intravenous chelation treatment of EDTA at the Advanced Intergrative Medicine Center in Portersville, Penn.

The coroner’s office has performed an autopsy. Results will be known in a month. Though a link hasn’t been confirmed, the news unnerves some autism specialists.

“I don’t think it is a good idea. There is no clinical benefit of chelation therapy for autism and clearly a proven risk,” said Dr. Donna Seger, Medical Director of the Tennessee Poison Center and past president of the American Academy of clinical toxicology

Dr. Cutler agrees. Chelating drugs can have side effects, but says accredited practitioners order regular blood and urine tests to watch for problems.

Still, researchers say there’s no evidence heavy metals are linked to autistic symptoms. What’s more, many children improve on their own — advances that parents may attribute to autism. Finally, there have been no gold-standard studies to convince experts the therapy works.

Julie Cromie says chelation hasn’t completely cured Nathan. He still has some symptoms of autism, but he has improved to where he is a social talkative nine-year-old who will enter a main-stream school program this fall. Her faith in chelation, she feels, has been rewarded.

“The thing is there is hope for us now, whereas before it felt hopeless. We now feel there is hope he will have a normal life if he continues to make the progress he is making,” said Cromie.