Adverse effects from DTPA? DTPA is widely used in many medical applications because of its intrinsic safety. But like every drug that is effective, it has to be used thoughtfully.

I get the question about the safety of DTPA frequently, This is a recent short response I gave to an individual. I will also expand on that, below.

Any drug that works well can be dangerous if given incorrectly. This is my expertize: doing this correctly. The one adverse event everyone with GDD or lead toxicity feel is worsening of their symptoms with chelation with DTPA. This is the Flare reaction. As I am sure you have read most of my blogs, you know that this has to happen if they have disease. We make Flare less and short-lived by our strategy of starting with less chelator and more steroids, and work towards increasing chelator and dropping steroids.

Other than that I have not experienced any other unexpected or bad effect. DTPA is used in many medical settings because of its intrinsic high safety.

Expanding then on this response. I frequently hear from GDD patients that various doctors, amazingly to me even (perhaps especially) toxicologists will tell them:

" woooo (the sound ghosts make) DTPA can be dangerous". Hearing this comment, again and again, is like Freddie Kruger in the Nightmare on Elm horror series. Just when I have written a paper, or a series of blogs on the subject, just when I think this time Freddie is dead- then the next thing I know he is back from some other group of physicians/ health care workers/ Bogwons.

So for this group I have used the expression: Opinion unconfounded by knowledge.

I would include in this group those that think DTPA chelation doesn't work for GDD. Really? Then how do you explain, giving the agent, a lot of Gd comes out documented on urine tests, and if done correctly, the great majority of patients I treat get a lot better. There cannot be any better direct evidence in anything in Medicine. The person is sick from Gd. You give the DTPA and a lot of Gd comes out, and then they feel a lot better. How stupid are you to think that it does not work?

I do not really have the time to parse out in each group of nay-sayers what their psychopathology is. I think a lot of it is the traditional, physician paternalism that they know best, even though they may not have read a medical article in 15 years. Jealousy is another huge grouping. Overall I cluster the groups into individuals who are Greed-Based-Stupid Yet Smart (GBSYS). Greed is a huge umbrella term, that I don't want to expand on here, as it is not relevant to this blog. I add in the complement of Smart because you do need to be able to memorize stuff well to graduate from Medicine. But memorization is not the same as wisdom. So more and more I feel less ivory tower elitism: nurse practitioners, ND, chiropractors can be much better health care practitioners than MDs if they are thoughtful, pay attention to what the patient is telling them, and wise, and a considerable number are.

At the same time it is critical for everyone to know, there is no 100% guarantee in anything, but with that said, correctly performed DTPA chelation is as safe as anything in Medicine.

In the health alerts I receive daily, yesterday I read that 11 people died from drinking a liquid supplement tainted with Listeria. So that clearly should have been safe, just a smoothie, but wasn't.

When dealing with drugs that really work well, yes they can be dangerous, because they actually work, if it is done poorly. It is your health and your life, that is why I recommend to all individuals who contact me, that they should come to see me for atleast the first two chelations, then they can find a place closer to home to get chelated and I can assist with that. I understand expense and convenience are always important considerations. We also list on GadTTRAC (gadttrac.org) treating facilities that offer a level of care, mist of them, that I do. So if you have close access to them, you do not need to see me for the first two chelations. I do not control them, so I am not 100% confident all do as I do, and several do variants, I do not necessarily agree with - overall though very good.

So in my practice, and being well informed on the 150 million or so administrations of a DTPA based molecule in MR contrast, DTPA is as safe as anything in medicine given iv. But what I have learned from GDD, and from everything else, including smoothies, nothing is 100% guarantee, and DTPA is a foreign antigen to the body. Safer than the vast majority of others, but still foreign.

Richard Semelka, MD