Gadolinium Deposition Disease and DTPA chelation. How many chelation sessions and at what spacing do I need? Treatment is a war, not a battle.

Here is a recent email I sent to a GDD sufferer:

Yes the first chelations especially if you have a lot of Gd in you, the Flares can be strong, because you are moving a lot of Gd in your body. As the chelations continue, there simply is progressively less Gd to move hence Flares are less strong. Flares that arise later, > 1 week postchelation, informs you that you are experiencing a lot of re-equilibration Flare, which means going to shorter intervals between chelation, at least for the next 3 chelations. 1 or 2 weeks. Severe Flare right away means you have to manage Gd removal Flare better: more steroids/ less chelator.

Dealing with GBCAs is a war, not a battle. Perseverance is critical. An important aspect is it does not appear that you have significant complicating factors, so you will get to the end of the tunnel.

You can always come back here to the treatment mothership.

On another social media site, another sufferer had thought on an earlier blog I mentioned individuals need at least 50 chelations.... That is not what I had written. But since there is confusion, I will reword that, and expand.

1. Simple pure GDD without significant complicating conditions, generally 5 chelations/ 1 GBCA injection is required. When I write 5 chelation sessions this generally means five of: day 1 Ca-DTPA/ day 2 Zn-DTPA at 5 ml for each agent each day. Lower amount of chelators often doubles this figure so 10 chelations/ 1 GBCA. But in a number of cases, the safety of less chelator makes this trade off in number of chelations worth while.

2. GDD Tcell dysregulation varies in severity between individuals, just as peanut allergies vary. Some people can eat handfuls of peanuts and develop hives, a very few eat 1 peanut and die from anaphylaxis. So the intensity of the immune reaction varies between individuals with GDD. Some individuals who received a number of GBCA injections and did not develop GDD till GBCA injection 5 or later, this reflects a lesser severity immune reaction, and hence may need less than 5 x the number of GBCA injections. But one cannot bank on it.

3. It is possible to predict, based on the number and type of complicating factors how many more chelation sessions will be needed, but there is uncertainty. So severe back surgery, complicated surgery, other significant T cell dysregulation (CIPRO TOX, Post Covid syndrome (long haul), post Covid vaccine syndrome,) each at least doubles the number of chelations, and with multiple pre-existent conditions, they tend to go up by multiples (eg: triple the number of chelations). In a prior blog I mentioned a top end of 50 chelations/ per individual would result in near cure for the vast majority, as I was taking into consideration individuals with two and more complicating factors.

4. I never advocate using weak chelators because they result in significant redistribution (an immediate post chelation phenomenon). I am not sure why, but it seems I need to continuously repeat this. Gd can be picked up in skin and redeposited in brain.

5. Amount of chelator, amount of immune dampening, intervals between chelations, can and should be varied between individuals.

6. DTPA chelation with steroids/ antihistamines is a pure treatment of the root cause of disease. This rarely occurs in medicine that the root cause is directly treatable.. This is akin to putting a cast on a simple fracture, or removing 100 cactus needles from the skin. There are perhaps 100 damages that GDD causes biochemically. Perhaps a few need to be chased, but focusing on treating individual symptoms generally is a mistake.

7. GDD treatment with DTPA + steroids/antihistamines also have a beneficial effect on many/ most other pre-existent Tcell dysregulations the GDD sufferer may have, this is because many are either due to a metal (and DTPA removes a number of other metals, notably lead, very well); and steroid/antihistamines is the standard treatment for most autoimmune and other immune diseases; Immune-mediated Inflammatory Diseases, ofcourse the presence of both of these preceding GDD, and the other condition may actually be GDD all along (fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic inflammatory syndrome, cytokine release syndrome, etc).

8. It always makes sense to combine additional treatment strategies: diet, some supplements, mild exercise, etc

I will finish by re-iterating clear information to individuals who still, for various reasons, none good, doubt that DTPA chelation should be done, and is somehow unproven or dangerous. Chelation with DTPA relies exactly on the science that the development of all the GBCA agents is based on, to begin with. Central is the use of the most stable chelator that can perform/facilitate the required task at hand. This relies on the exact same science that GBCA agents were designed on., with well over 500 million injections of GBCAs made to date. So if you are an MR radiologist doubting the safety of chelation with DTPA, you are then also doubting the safety and basis of how the GBCA agents you are using are based (you knuckle heads). The one critical difference is the insight that the GBCA-type agent must be re-creatible in vivo with a chelator, which is not a constraint with GBCA creation. Stability constant is critical, and the most important data point that must be known before using a chelator. High stability constant in combination with location of the charged focus are crucial aspects of a chelator since a number of GBCAs are tugged fully intact back into the circulation.

Similarly the use of steroids/ antihistamines is the basis of treatment of acute hypersensitivity reactions (AHR) of all kinds: from all radiology contrast agents (Gd and iodine), cancer drug AHRs, other drug AHRs, and every day reactions such as bee stings and poison ivy. Conservatively 100 million uses of this strategy have been performed to date.

So essentially the strategy we employ replicates GBCA usage (500 million doses) and AHR treatment management (100 million doses). There is essentially no treatment for any serious disease that approximates this level of prior usage... and it works very well....so few if any other treatments for serious disease achieves this level of near cure. So although I may have created this strategy, I simply stood on the shoulders of 500 million and 100 million prior uses, but understood why and how to combine them.

Could the chelator be better, probably yes. I like the concept of using BOPTA as an iv chelator, HOPO and oral DTPA may be game changers for heavy metal treatment because of the ease of use. I would prefer more specific immune dampening to the T cell reaction of GDD and chelation, but it is not there yet. If it was present, I would use it.

So the state of the art for treatment of GDD is DTPA chelation and oral steroids/antihistamines. But, significant Flare reactions can arise. These however can be managed, and they do improve as less Gd is in the total body system over time with chelation. But it is critical the individual understands, treatment is not a battle, one and done, it is a war, with victories but also some losses, the war flows but also ebbs, on route to final victory.

GDD treatment is highly effective as we do it, but it is a war, not a battle, and success depends on perseverance of the sufferer. Obviously it also is important that the treating practice really knows what they are doing, since treatment is nuanced..

Richard Semelka, MD