Originally Posted by Hammilton

There are a lot of doctors peddling nonsense to parents of Autistic children, which the Cutler protocol is aimed at. There is zero evidence that autism is improved by chelation.

The problem with his protocol, one aimed at neuropathology, is that the chelators he uses don't penetrate the brain (they're effectively blocked by the blood brain barrier) and at least after a few months post exposure cessation they don't seem to be of much value.

I do appreciate any help and the goodwill behind any suggestion, but I bear special antipathy for those who peddle false, pseudoscientific hope to parents who have no real hope- and the ridiculous fees they're charging those parents for what are actually very cheap medications. Not to mention that chelators are very real drugs and can have profound consequences on the body and giving them to children when there's no proof of benefit is abhorrent.

I have found one study which found a decrease in brain manganese levels after administration of these typical chelators, but the bulk say no benefit.

GerryW- The Para-amino-SA looks extremely interesting, I wasn't referring to your post when I responded. I have a lot of hope for this- maybe this doesn't have to get worse and worse and worse.


I was hoping to find someone who had been affected by manganese poisoning. Unfortunately the only people I've seen were diagnosed by nutritionists based on ineffective hair tests and showed the usual vague symptoms associated with, well, everything.

I can see why this is so rarely diagnosed, it seems that urine and blood tests are ineffective, there aren't well established blood levels at which symptoms begin, if your exposure to the metal ended more than a month before the test, the reliability is very low. The only well established method of determining whether manganese is causing damage is T1 weighted MRI looking for a hotspot in the globus pallidus.

Considering that inhaling water vapor in your shower of high-manganese water could be enough to cause parkinsonian syndrome after a lifetime of exposure, it's easy to see why manganism is probably underdiagnosed.

If 4-amino-SA is really that effective, it would be interesting to see it's success rate in early onset (or simply early-diagnosis) IPD. If it were able to cure even 5% of newly diagnosed patients, that would likely be worth it (depending on the drugs risks, I'm not sure how safe it is).