Chelation Therapy for Alzheimer's

Although mainstream medicine takes a rather dim view of claims that chelation therapy is the panacea for virtually all the world's ills, some evidence is appearing that chelation may be able to help patients with aging-related diseases, including Alzheimer's. The positive reports are based on recent McGill University studies that show clioquinol, an antiprotozoal medication that also has chelating properties, may be able to reverse damage done by Huntington's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases.

Alzheimer's Disease

• Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, according to MedlinePlus. The Merck Manual of Health & Aging estimates that the disease affects up to 30 percent of all adults over the age of 85. Although the cause of the disease is unknown, medical researchers suspect it's a combination of environmental factors and genetics. However, it is unknown what environmental factors are involved. One thing about Alzheimer's is fairly clear. The biggest risk factor is age, as indicated by the high incidence of the disease among the elderly. There is no cure for Alzheimer's, although some medications seem to slow down the disease's progress in at least some patients.

Chelation Therapy

• Chelation therapy, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Association for the treatment of heavy metals poisoning, is designed to remove these toxic substances from the body. This is done by the introduction of chelating compounds into the body, which then can bind to heavy metals such as iron, lead, cadmium, zinc and mercury and thus eliminate them through the urine. Historically, the most widely used chelating compound has been ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA).

  However, other chemical compounds also have chelating properties. One such compound, clioquinol, was used for decades as an gastrointestinal antiprotozoal medication in Asia and Europe but was withdrawn from some markets after widespread side effects were reported in Japan. However, a recent study indicates that clioquinol helps patients with Alzheimer's. How it does so is uncertain, although researchers believe it has something to do with clioquinol's ability to chelate metals.

Groundbreaking Study

• Led by Siegfried Hekimi, a team of researchers at Montreal's McGill University conducted animal studies to explore the effects of various substances on a mitochondrial enzyme known as CLK-1, a protein closely associated with the aging process. They discovered that clioquinol reduces activity by CLK-1, which is also informally known as "clock-1."

  In an article in the October 15, 2008, issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Hekimi and other members of his team reported that "clioquinol inhibits the activity of mammalian CLK-1 in cultured cells, an inhibition that can be blocked by iron or cobalt cations [positively charged ions], suggesting that chelation is involved in the mechanism of action of clioquinol on CLK-1."

  Based on their laboratory findings, Hekimi and his colleagues observed that clioquinol's ability to slow down CLK-1 activity might be used to retard the progress or prevent such age-dependent neurodegenerative diseases as Alzheimer's, Huntington's and Parkinson's. They also argue that their findings "support the hypothesis that pharmacologically targeting aging-associated proteins could help relieve age-dependent diseases."