Alternative Heart Treatment Moving Into the Mainstream

Chelation therapy, an alternative technique long dismissed by conventional heart doctors, has taken a giant step toward becoming a first-line mainstream medical treatment, thanks to a boost from the National Institutes of Health.

The federal health agency’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health has awarded $800,000 to Mount Sinai Medical Center of Florida and the Duke Clinical Research Institute to begin a follow-up study of chelation that could lead to its use as a standard treatment for cardiovascular disease.

The funding, which will allow the research team to design a definitive study on chelation’s benefits, follows a preliminary clinical trial that showed the technique provides a huge health boost to heart attack survivors that rivals the benefits of standard treatments.

That early study, published online in the American Heart Journal, found the combo treatment cut the death risk for some heart patients by half and is particularly beneficial to those with diabetes.

Lead researcher Gervasio Lamas, M.D., with the Columbia University Division of Cardiology at Mount Sinai, said the results came as a complete surprise to the researchers, who expected the study to prove chelation is a sham treatment.

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