I think the arsenic salts treatment is designed for Staphylococcus-associated CFS, which is what Dr Tarello had (from Staphylococcus bacteremia), so perhaps the CFS patients that went to see Dr Tarello but did not get helped had CFS caused by other pathogens?
I cannot find any further studies detailing the people with CFS that Dr Tarello treated, and don't know what sort of pathogens these people may have carried in their bodies, and whether they had Staphylococcus or not. Do you know of anyone with this sort of info for the people he treated? I couldn't find anything.
I have Staphylococcus aureus in my gut (detected via stool analysis), so it is possible that Staphylococcus and its very potent cytotoxins contribute to my CFS symptoms, which is why this treatment interest me, and it may interest others that know they have internal Staphylococcus infections. I am just concerned about possible risks.
The stuff I posted on the Mind and Muscle forum was a kind of very rough risk assessment regarding the carcinogenic potential of arsenic - but there is lots of other general discussion on that thread, so I am going to cut and paste my stuff from that forum, and put the most relevant info about this risk assessment below (if you think this assessment might be wrong, please let me know; it is just to get a ballpark figure).
The risk I calculated finally was: that arsenic CFS treatment will increase your lifetime risk of cancer from arsenic from 1 in 500 (which you have already if you live in the US/Europe due to environmental arsenic exposure), to perhaps something around 1 in 400, or 1 in 300.
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Veterinary surgeon Dr Walter Tarello has used
arsenic compounds to cure both animals, and humans, of chronic fatigue syndrome.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11561958
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15129582
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11131041
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12688127
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11440190
He used injections of either
potassium arsenite, or
sodium thiacetarsamide. I have read that arsenic trioxide should work also, and would be safer.
Generally the CFS symptoms in these animals were due to
Staphylococcus bacteremia. Staphylococcus is a difficult bacterium to eradicate; the newest research shows that Staphylococcus can change into an intracellular form, in order hide away from the immune system (and antibiotics) inside cells; but seemingly, these arsenic compounds eradicated this bacterium.
The human CFS cases treated were Dr Tarello himself, and his wife. They both were handling animals with CFS fromStaphylococcus infection, and caught this infection themselves, and both developed CFS, but they decided to use the arsenic compound treatment on themselves - and thereby achieved
full remission from CFS.
Staphylococcus has long been linked to human CFS, probably as a co-infection that increases the CFS viral symptoms. Evidence for Staphylococcal involvement in human CFS comes from experiments with Staphylococcus toxoid vaccine (which increases the immune response against Staphylococcus): when given to CFS patients, this vaccine provided significant improvement in symptoms (ref:
1) - provided that this vaccine was given regularly. The fact that this vaccine has to be regularly re-adminsted indicates that the vaccine does not clear the Staphylococcus, it just helps the immune system to better control this bacterium.
Given that Staphylococcus bacteria pump out a whole array of very nasty toxins, including
alpha toxin (alpha-hemolysin), which is responsible for the fatalities of toxic shock syndrome that sometimes arise from tampon use. Alpha toxin makes pores in your cellular membranes, which causes lots of problems for the cells.
Thus Staphylococcus toxins may well be contributing factors to CFS pathology.
My guess is that other pathogens, typically immunosuppressive viruses (such as HHV-6A, enterovirus, XMRV) will weaken the immune system and allow Staphylococcus to proliferate more, so that there will be higher levels of Staphylococcus toxins going around in the body.
Of course, not everyone will have Staphylococcus in their body; so this treatment does not apply to all cases of CFS.
This study that indicates that 7.2% of people in the general population have Staphylococcus aureus in their intestines, and out of those positive samples, 14.6% was the methicillin-resistant variety of Staphylococcus (MRSA). My feeling is that if you do have Staphylococcus in your guts (a stool analysis will tell you if you have), and you have these immunosuppressive viruses, then Staphylococcus may well be contributing to your CFS symptoms.
Might it be that arsenic compounds can completely eliminate Staphylococcus from the body (not an easy task), and so provide significant amelioration of CFS symptoms?
The problem is that there is a carcinogenicity question mark over human use of arsenic compounds (apparently animals are much less susceptible to the carcinogenic effects of arsenic compounds than humans); although arsenic has also been used as a cancer treatment.