Dear Editor,
I found the commentaries (Irish Medical Times, 6.12.13) by Dr. Neville Wilson and Mr. Serif Sultan on the recent cholesterol guidelines, presented at the American Heart Association (AHA) 2003 Scientific Sessions, most informative.
Also presented at that same meeting was a report by Dr. Esteban Escolar, described by Medscape as ‘extraordinary’ chelation effects discovered in patients with diabetes.
This was a sub-study of patients with diabetes enrolled in the previously reported TACT study (The Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy) which found a highly significant 15% absolute decrease in risk of the primary composite endpoint among diabetic patients in the chelation arm compared with the patients treated with the placebo infusions
.
When they broke the composite down to look at their secondary endpoints, they found that they had about a 40% reduction in total mortality, a 40% reduction in recurrent MI, and about a 50% reduction in mortality in the patients with diabetes.
In the TACT trial patients who were randomised to a regimen involving up to 40 separate three hour infusions of a chelation solution (EDTA plus a vitamin combination) experienced an 18% drop in the trials primary endpoint (all/cause death, re-infarction, stroke, or hospitalistaion for angina) compared with patients randomised to a placebo infusion. All patients in the TACT study were aged 50 years or older and had had a prior MI.
Details of this study can be found on Medscape, and were also published in ‘Circulation: Cardiovascular and Quality Outcomes’.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Sean Dunphy,
Cork Road Medical Clinic,
Carrigaline
Co. Cork
Dunphy Medical Carrigaline 