"Heavy Metal Urine Testing and Chelation for Autism"
Environmental risk factors, meaning non-genetic risk factors,
may play a significant role in autism,
given the fact that even identical twins
that share the same DNA may not share
the disease more than half the time.
A variety of risk factors have been proposed:
lead, mercury, persistent organic pollutants
like PCBs, or birth complications
might cause a pro-inflammatory state
and oxidative damage in the brain.
But, what’s that based on?
You see a lot of correlational studies like this,
speculating about the possibility that one of the hidden agents
spurring the rise in autism
is something within the food supply,
especially industrialized meat production,
particularly poultry,
based on the fact that the rise in poultry consumption,
particularly parental poultry consumption,
appeared to correlate with the rise in autism.
They suggest it’s the massive contamination
of meat with antibiotics, growth hormones, and toxic pollutants,
such as dioxin in the meat.
There’s certainly toxicological issues
associated with meat production,
not just the pollutants
but the cooked meat carcinogens, leukotoxins.
This review in the journal Meat Science
came up with a whole list.
But, if anything, the main chronic toxic
response of consuming meat and meat products
is cancer, not autism.
There’s tons of confounding factors
that could explain this correlation.
Same thing with fish consumption and autism.
On a state by state level, mercury-related
fish advisories were found to be
a surprisingly strong predictor of autism rates,
suggesting that mercury contaminated fish was to blame,
but how many people tend to even eat
the fish from their own state?
That in no way proves a cause and effect
mercury-autism connection.
Why would they even think to make that connection?
Well, heavy metals, like mercury and lead,
do cause brain damage,
and there’s some similarities
in terms of the symptoms they can cause,
but you don’t really know...
until you put it to the test.
“Urine mobilization test,” “challenge test,” or
“provoked urine test” are all terms
used to describe the administration
of a chelating agent— a heavy metal binding agent—
to a person prior to the collection
of their urine to test to see the level
of heavy metal burden within their bodies.
But, pediatric, public health, and toxicology authorities
recommend against the use of these tests,
based on a lack of scientific validation
and a lack of demonstrated benefits
to the patients.
Usually promoted by alternative practitioners
as the basis for recommending, promoting, and selling
to the patient questionable and often inappropriate therapies
supposedly aimed at “detoxification.”
Despite this disapproval,
the tests are still commonly used
and recommended by some practitioners.
This is what the results end up looking like.
Uh oh, looks like mercury is in the red.
It’s easy for uninformed patients and providers
to infer that a result that falls
in the yellow or red background
signifies heavy metal poisoning,
but that’s because they’re not reading the fine print.
That reference interval, that normal green range,
is the level under non-provoked conditions,
meaning normal urine,
not urine from someone who was just given
a chelating drug to provoke the response,
to intentionally grab onto heavy metals
in the body and pull them into the urine.
That’s like giving someone a drug
that raises their heart rate— like a shot of adrenaline,
then taking their pulse, and being,
“Like wow, you got an abnormally high heart rate!”
Compared to other people who just got a shot of adrenaline?
No, just compared to a regular resting heart rate.
Well, duh.
See, there's no established
reference ranges for provoked urine samples;
so, they’re using the wrong reference range.
So, we have no idea what the results mean,
and given the potential harm of whatever treatment
a practitioner then tries to sell you on,
these tests should not be utilized.
Most commonly, that treatment means chronic chelation therapy.
A half million people with autism
are subjected to chelation therapy in the U.S. every year,
despite no clinical trial evidence
suggesting there’s any benefit.
Why not just give it a try though?
Because there’s potential for side effects,
like death.
They’re referring to this case,
where doctors were like oops, they just gave the wrong drug.
Should have been given edetate calcium disodium,
not just straight edetate disodium.
But this may have been no accident.
That’s exactly what’s recommended by leading chelation proponents.
As such, it would have been surprising
only if the practitioner had not chosen it.
So, this may not just be a simple matter
of the “wrong medication being administered.”
That may just be a distraction from
the prospect that the killer was quackery.
This is not to say that heavy metals aren’t toxic.
It’s just that instead of trying
to give people chelation drugs after the fact,
we should try to not get exposed in the first place.
For example, in this study, they compared
the blood mercury levels of physicians who ate no fish,
compared to those who ate 1 or 2 servings a week,
compared to those who ate 3 or more.
Here’s where the 3 or more servings
a week group started out,
and after a single chelation drug dose,
mercury levels dropped down to here,
but perhaps better to eat less fish,
or no fish at all.