This is as bizarre as it is striking, at least in my opinion and there doesn’t seem to be any indication as yet as to what mechanism may be involved. From the NIH:
Full story at link including an explanation of chelation therapy and the fact that it’s not currently approved for this use.
Hmm - well even though it didn’t show a benefit to those without diabetes (as a group) - there was another subgroup that it did help - those with a previous MI.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1672238
And they are quick to point out more research needs to be done and they aren’t recommending it yet. I am no expert on any of this, but from my Laypersons understanding - Chelation therapy involves cleaning the blood of metals or minerals - by binding it to something and allowing it to be excreted. The body has a bunch of processes (again my laypersons understanding) that - well use minerals to some extent. It is not out of the realm of possibility that there may be something wrong with those systems in people in those subgroups - while people that are healthy - they don’t have an excess of minerals or whatever.
Just my guess as to why it MIGHT work, but it would help if I knew anything about how the body works…
The always-hilarious Orac has a takedown of this supposed “result” here.
You do realize that’s from 2012 and that even the JAMA article is from March of this year and is the “initial report” my cite refers to - right?
I understand that this shit has a bad rap, but look people, science still science. M’kay?
Well, yeah, and most scientific results (perhaps especially those of clinical trials) are wrong. Real scientific knowledge does not inhere in individual research reports.
Did you even look at the article? This was NOT a small study. You had over 1700 people and roughly a third had a 40 to 50% REDUCTION in cardiovascular events!!!
How do you look at that and walk away saying there’s nothing to that? Please. Tell me.
Hang on there - did YOU read it? There were 633 participants that were diabetic, and presumably only half of those received the treatment. Just for the sake of accuracy. I also noted that they were followed for between 1-5 years. I would like to know how many cardiovascular events happened during that time. Even among this group, presumably people aren’t dropping dead from heart attacks on a daily basis. With a small number of events, even a relatively small change can give huge percentage numbers. For instance, if the control group saw 5 events, and the treated group only saw 3, that’s a 40% reduction, but it may not be real or significant. Now, I don’t really think that’s happening in this case. I trust the NIH to be more reliable than that. But I’d like to see the numbers.
I think the article does a good job of interpreting the results: these are interesting and encouraging results, but more research is needed before we declare this to be an effective treatment.
The study was poorly designed from all I’ve read. Also, subgroup analyses was done when no difference was seen. If you look at enough different subgroups in enough different ways, you expect to “find” things.
If any of you had read the article you would have seen that immediately following the paragraph I quoted was THIS quote, emphasis added:
So unless those of you here think you’re better prepared to critique this study than someone who does this sort of thing for a living at one of the world’s most renown medical institutions, please spare me the standard SDMB hubris.
The principal investigator makes a claim that it’s striking results, and others not involved in the research don’t agree. Standard scientific progress - if this is anything at all, it’ll need more test. As it stands, it’s a blip.
If that was aimed at me, you might note that what I said was precisely the same thing as what your quote said: it’s interesting and encouraging, but the correct conclusion to form is “this is worth researching further”, not “this is definitely a valid treatment”.
Obviously this requires further study. Duh.
They don’t even know what the possible mechanism might be and what distinguishes diabetics, so clearly more research is needed. My point and clearly the point of the researchers is that SOMETHING is going on here. SOMETHING very significant. So as much as one may abhor chelation therapy, chill, because there might actually be something to it - even if the connection turns out to be something only tangentially related.
edit: my problem with some of the comments here is the typical knee-jerk reaction to anything that has previously been labeled pseudo-science. Yes, it has a reputation, but don’t let that blind you to other possibilities. That was the problem with marijuana research for decades. It’s also currently the problem with other drugs that are abused recreationally but have therapeutic potential.
Something may be going on here. We certainly don’t know yet if it is significant. “Significant” is a word that has to be used very, very cautiously in science, and you can’t use it unless you have the statistics to back it up.
Again: this study provides the rationale to do more research. We CANNOT draw ANY conclusions from this one study by itself. Double-blind human trials are the gold standard for research like this, but they are not perfect. You randomly divide your sample up into control and test cohorts. The rationale behind this is that, hopefully, you’re evening out any and all confounding factors equally on both sides. However, just due to pure chance, you could end up with a control group that is, on average, older than the test group, and thus more likely to have heart problems. Or instead of age, it could be smoking, ethnicity, or any of a thousand other things that might affect the results. There’s no way of knowing. That’s why it needs to be repeated.
Better yet, now that you have preliminary data about this treatment, go back to an animal model. I’m sure that there are mouse diabetes models. You can get genetically identical mice born at the same time, fed the same food, given all the same treatments, etc, etc, and look at how your treatment affects them. You can dissect them and look at their heart tissue, diabetes effects, etc, etc. From this, you can figure out, firstly, IF the treatment is working, and if so, HOW it is working. Then when you go back to humans, you have a much much better idea of what to look for. Or you could just as easily find that the initial difference that you saw in your first human study disappears, and you discover that it was just a fluke, and the treatment doesn’t actually work at all.
This is how science works. What you don’t do is make sweeping conclusions based on a single piece of data…at least, you don’t do it more than once.
Do you have an actual point?
Do you? I mean, you seem to be very, very worked up about what many outside reviewers are considering a result of little significance given the design of the study.
By all means, refer me to these “outside reviewers.” If you mean your 2012 review that is completely irrelevant, well, I’ve already dealt with that if you’ve been paying attention.
Look, I don’t really give a shit one way or the other. I’m not one of those crystal hugging, homeopath elixir chugging new age types. Hardly. I have no dog in this or any other fight. It just gets under my skin when I see people become slaves to their prejudices and preconceptions. How about you?
You seem quite worked up about something you don’t care about.
You mean, not buying a principal investigator’s spin on his own study without putting it into a larger context? Especially given that there’s no discernable or explainable biological mechanism for the results?
Last time I checked, that’s considered skepticism, not prejudice.
Sigh. If you want to make this about me, I’m happy to oblige. I do so love the attention. 
Funny, I thought the discussion was about a study that seems to have an artifact result in the design that some people (you) claim is highly significant and other people claim is not as significant as the principal investigator claims. Sorry if you wanted something different.
LOL. Keep trying to minimize the significance of the result. Fortunately you’re not one of the people who will be following up on this investigation.