Gadolinium. Bone Deposition. Characteristics and Treatment.

Bone is one of the two largest reservoirs of Gadolinium (Gd) in the body, skin is the other, and is the most durable reservoir with the greatest difficulty to remove Gd from. As such it deserves special attention.

In GDD symptomatic deposition of Gd can occur in essentially all bones, but due to their size is often symptomatic in larger bones, such as femoral head (in hip joint) and head of tibia (knee). Because bone marrow derived immune cells are of primary importance in this disease, which in my theory is a Tcell dysregulation condition, a distinctive location of bone pain are ribs, because in the adult skeleton red marrow is largely restricted to the ribs and the central spine skeleton.

Of all the common pain categories of GDD, bone pain is generally the pain type that resolves the slowest with chelation. Whereas brain symptoms, such as brain fog, generally starts to recover following even the first chelation, bone pain may not show much improvement until 5 chelations. In the end I often recommend pausing chelation even when bone pain persists, in order to see if this pain will show spontaneous improvement with the passage of time. The benefit is if symptoms of bone pain escalate with prolonged pausing, this has reflected shift of Gd from bone to sites with better removal such as skin and brain. So pausing chelation with bone pain persistent, may not be a set-back if chelation has not yet been sufficient, as with pausing more Gd has moved from the bone and migrated to skin, brain, etc. In these latter locations, Gd removal is much more readily achieved.

NSAIDS are generally a very helpful addition to manage bone pain, such as generic Advil (ibuprofen), Aleve (naproxen), and enteric-coated aspirin.

Additional important notes: in individuals where bone pain is the principle symptom, chelation every 4 weeks may be preferred than shorter intervals, to allow more re-equilibration from bone to sites where Gd is more easily removed. This may be especially true if GDD is due to the most stable GBCAs (the macrocyclics Prohance and Dotarem/ Clariscan) re-equilibration creates the circumstance that Gd moves from bone to skin, etc,. So in the situation where Gd is more difficult to remove from body (stable macrocyclics), and where removal is less substantial, shift of Gd from the most durable to less durable reservoirs, facilitates total body removal of Gd,

Richard Semelka, MD.