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There is actually evidence that chelation can help for people with authism: Conclusion: Overall, both one and seven rounds of DMSA therapy seems to be reasonably safe in children with ASD who have high urinary excretion of toxic metals, and possibly helpful in reducing some of the symptoms of autism in those children. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19852790/ 31.165.215.228 (talk) 18:51, 20 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@31.165.215.228

You are correct. In fact, there is plenty evidence that chelation would be an effective treatment for autism symptoms because there is plenty of evidence that heavy metals (particularly aluminium) is abundant and multiple times higher in brains of autists than non-autists.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010854502000784

"Chelation therapy is useful in the treatment of renal impairment-associated Al accumulation and toxicity. It might be useful in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. Al chelation may have utility in determining the role of Al in neurological diseases."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8301696/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26404567/

"There is a distinct correlation between aluminium (Al) intoxication and neurodegenerative diseases (ND). We demonstrated how patients affected by ND showing Al intoxication benefit from short-term treatment with calcium disodium ethylene diamine tetraacetic acid (EDTA) (chelation therapy)."

There is also well established evidence that heavy metal urinary excretion is higher in autists.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2809421/

"Overall, the correlation analysis found multiple significant correlations of severity of autism and the urinary excretion of toxic metals, such that a higher body burden of toxic metals was associated with more severe autistic symptoms."

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9820494/

"Intriguingly, metals affect the critical molecular aspects of ASD, including oxidative stress, inflammation, synapse development, synaptic communication, brain connectivity, and gut-brain signaling[sic]. As a result, one could speculate that a primary pathology of ASD may be a trace metal imbalance, characterized by either the presence of toxic metals and/or the overload or lack of essential metals, particularly a lack of zinc during brain development (pregnancy). In turn, genetic mutations and other non-genetic factors may recapitulate this trace metal imbalance fully or partially, leading to similar symptoms."

Furthermore, it is well established that aluminium alone is a potent neuro-toxin.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6550484/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6550484/

"Aluminum is a ubiquitous neurotoxin highly enriched in our biosphere, and has been implicated in the etiology and pathology of multiple neurological diseases that involve inflammatory neural degeneration, behavioral impairment and cognitive decline." ~2026-63677-8 (talk) 13:35, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Iron induces chronic heart failure in half of heart attack survivors, according to landmark study

"....iron chelators reduce iron content within the heart tissue."

https://www.mbi.ucla.edu/in-the-spotlight

Sometime in the near future, the section on Iron and Heart may have to be revised and updated. 104.35.48.79 (talk) 05:52, 30 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I find it... disturbing to see, "This article is part of a series on Alternative medicine" displayed so prominently on the page. Chelation therapy is an effective, main-stream treatment for several different kinds of metal poisoning. Whether or not autism and heart disease and cancer are caused by low-level metal poisoning that goes unrecognized by main-stream medicine, and whether or not those conditions can be reversed by chelation therapy is a different question.

If a meme catches fire on the internet saying that Penicillin cures warts, will we then label Penicillin as "alternative medicine?" 151.201.129.79 (talk) 23:33, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed the sidebar as it gives too much weight to the alternative use. (That will likely be reverted.) This article, unfortunately, deals with both mainstream and alternative/quack uses. We normally have separate articles for alternative medical articles. Not sure what happened here. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 02:14, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:57, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dustfreeworld, I see you left an edit summary at Template:Alternative medicine sidebar when you deleted Chelation therapy#Controversies from the sidebar:

"Changed my mind and self-revert. Sorry I was wrong. It’s not alternative https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?linkname=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=27199065"

Please explain what you mean. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 20:46, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In the opening paragraph it is claimed that "Chelation therapy also has a history of fraudulent use in alternative medicine, to treat claimed effects of heavy-metal exposure on problems as disparate as heart disease, cancer, and autism.". There is no citation to support this. ~2026-63677-8 (talk) 13:51, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There are issues related to the citations after the following sentence under 'Autism': "There is little to no credible scientific research that supports the use of chelation therapy for the effective treatment of autism."

Citation 22: There is no mention or review of chelation therapy in this citation. Ergo, this should be removed.

Citation 53: This is behind a pay wall, but as far as I can see, this article is about vaccines and autism and there is no mention of chelation therapy in relation to autism.

Citation 54: This citations supports the opposite of what is claimed. "Conclusion: DMSA chelation increased the urinary output of toxic and neurotoxic metals. Our data supports evidence that detoxification treatment with oral DMSA has beneficial effect on ASD patients."

Citation 55: Again, this supports that chelation therapy with DMSA is both helpful and "relatively" safe.

"Conclusion: Overall, both one and seven rounds of DMSA therapy seems to be reasonably safe in children with ASD who have high urinary excretion of toxic metals, and possibly helpful in reducing some of the symptoms of autism in those children."

Citation 56: This citation has very little or nothing to do with chelation therapy for autists. The only mention of chelation is the following paragraph: "A study by Bradstreet et al. [5] investigated the body burden of toxic metals by giving dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA), an oral chelation medication approved by the FDA for treating infantile lead poisoning. They found that the children with autism excreted 3.1 times as much mercury into their urine (which is where DMSA is excreted), P < .0002, but lead and cadmium levels were not significantly different. Overall there is some evidence to suggest that mercury and possibly other toxic metals are related to the etiology of autism."

Therefore, this citation fails to show that what it purports to.

Citation 57: This is another citation that shows the opposite of what is purported. "Overall, DMSA therapy seems to be reasonably safe, effective in removing several toxic metals (especially lead), dramatically effective in normalizing RBC glutathione, and effective in normalizing platelet counts. Only 1 round (3 days) was sufficient to improve glutathione and platelets. Additional rounds increased excretion of toxic metals."

Overall, 6 out of 7 citations used to support the statement that "...there is little to no credible scientific research that supports the use of chelation therapy for the effective treatment of autism" are dubious at best. Therefore, they should be removed or used in another section to support the opposite claim for the sake of removing the perception of bias.

I also suggest that all other citations be assessed for integrity. ~2026-63677-8 (talk) 14:21, 29 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]