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Potassium Arsenite 0.05% Cures CFS in Falcons, so what about humans?

There's an article from 2004 about a vet who treated falcons diagnosed with CFS with Potassium Arsenite 0.05% leading to complete remission of symptoms in 97%.

I'm assuming since this is an arsenic compound it's probably toxic in high doses and don't know how the diagnosis of CFS in birds is accomplished, but has anyone tried this and can humans even safely ingest such a compound in sufficient dosage?

Here's the article:
http://www.cfsresearch.org/cfs/tarello/cfs-treatment-falcons.htm

There's more articles by the same vet using the same compound on other animals with good results found here:

http://www.cfsresearch.org/cfs/tarello/
 

Jemal

Senior Member
Messages
1,031
Arsenic compounds are toxic in humans, even in low doses. It damages the liver and can cause cancers. A few grains of arsenic can kill a human. So this is not something to experiment with I think or take lightly.

Anyway, while Googling I noticed there is an FDA approved drug that has arsenic compounds and it's used to treat Leukemia, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_trioxide

It triggers cancer cells to commit suicide (apoptosis). In theory I could see a connection with CFS, maybe killing infected (XMRV?) cells.

It's interesting that falcons can also get CFS. I am wondering if it can be compared with CFS in humans though.
Wouldn't it be something if they got CFS, because mice are an important part of their dinner? This is wildly speculative of course...
 

ukxmrv

Senior Member
Messages
4,413
Location
London
CFS patients (human) did go to see Tarello in Italy. The only ones that I knew we not cured by his supplements. Sadly I lost track of what he was doing after that.
 
Thanks guys for the update. I figured someone had already tried it.

The old standby is arsenic...we killed the disease and the patient is cured!......Unfortunately, the patient is now also dead;-)

Makes you wonder if the animals actually got better or simply started acting well because they knew if they didn't they'd get another dose of arsenic....
 

acer2000

Senior Member
Messages
818
I have read that arsenic, AZT, and interferon can put adult T cell leukemia caused by HTLV into remission. What the side effects or long term effects on the patient I am not aware of. Its interesting, but the devil is in the details.
 

Francelle

Senior Member
Messages
444
Location
Victoria, Australia
The old standby is arsenic...we killed the disease and the patient is cured!......Unfortunately, the patient is now also dead;-)

Makes you wonder if the animals actually got better or simply started acting well because they knew if they didn't they'd get another dose of arsenic....

Very funny!

I wonder how a certain gentleman of the psychiatrict persuasion would interpret that?
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
I have been doing some research on Dr Walter Tarello's use of arsenic salts to cure CFS caused by Staphylococcus bacteria, which worked in humans and animals, and have tried to do some rough calculations for the potential risks involved in taking arsenic salts.

The info I found I posted here (in a thread on the Mind and Muscle forum).
 
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ukxmrv

Senior Member
Messages
4,413
Location
London
I had a quick look at the link, Hip. It's mainly on gut bacteria for anyone interested in that topic. Not really on Tarello. Also doesn't mention anyone actually cured or helped by this theory. Patients with CFS did go to see him and were not cured (this was not mentioned in the separate discussion). No point really having long discussions on a topic if the cure doesn't work?
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
I had a quick look at the link, Hip. It's mainly on gut bacteria for anyone interested in that topic. Not really on Tarello. Also doesn't mention anyone actually cured or helped by this theory. Patients with CFS did go to see him and were not cured (this was not mentioned in the separate discussion). No point really having long discussions on a topic if the cure doesn't work?

I think the arsenic salts treatment is designed for Staphylococcus bacteremia-associated CFS, which is what Dr Tarello had. Perhaps the CFS patients that went to see Dr Tarello had CFS caused by other pathogens, and this is why they were not helped by arsenic salts.

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.

I have Staphylococcus aureus in my gut (detected via stool analysis), so it is perhaps conceivable that Staphylococcus and its potent cytotoxins contribute to my CFS symptoms, which is why this treatment interest me, and it may interest others that have Staphylococcus in their guts. 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.


•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

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.

Some general info on arsenic is here: http://phys4.harvard.edu/~wilson/arsenic/arsenic_project_health_effects.html

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Here are some snippets regarding the toxicity considerations of arsenic compounds:

The recent article " Complete Remission After Treatment of Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia with Arsenic Trioxide" shows that moderate to high doses of arsenic given fora period of 30 days can cure leukemia. It is important to realizethat this is not in contradiction to the evidence that arsenic given at low doses for 15 years or more can produce high cancer rates (i.e.. kidney, bladder, lung). The doses given for leukemia cures were for about 30 days and the accumulated doses were about 300 mg. By way of comparison a person drinking 2 liters of water a day for20 years with 500 g/litre of arsenic (as was the case in Chile) will accumulate 7500 mg - 20 times more. So if the accumalated dose is the criterion for developing cancer, as is strongly believed, there should be no problem with the doses given for curative purposes. (Ref: 1)

Medicinal uses of arsenicals: Inorganic arsenic has been used in medicine for over 2500 years. The most widely used form was Fowler solution containing 1% potassium arsenite, which was used for treatment of psoriasis. Arsphenamine was for many years the standard treatment for syphilis. Melarsoprol is an organoarsenic compound used to treat infections caused by Trypanosoma brucei or Trypanosoma gambiense. Retrospective studies have suggested an increase in the incidence of hepatic angiosarcoma in people previously treated with Fowler solution, but evidence is tentative. Regular, long-term arsenic exposure has been associated with various cutaneous carcinomas as well as internal malignancies including bronchogenic carcinoma and hepatocellular carcinoma. (Ref: 1)[/I]

The first snippet above suggests that there should be no problem with moderate to high doses of arsenic given for short periods (30 days), and that it is mainly long term exposure (many decades) to arsenic compounds that, form this accumulated dose, may cause cancer.

The second snippet above hints that there may possibly be some dangers of increased risk of cancer, even with with short term dosing.

Note that the human CFS treatment used low dose intramuscular injection of potassium arsenite 0.5% for 10 days (1 ml/12 h), which I think works out to 5 mg of potassium arsenite every 12 hours, therefore a total of 100 mg of potassium arsenite for the whole 10 day CFS treatment.

Since potassium arsenite contains 51 % of elemental arsenic (by a molecular weight calculation), this means there is a total of 51 mg of elemental arsenic for the whole CFS treatment described above.

By comparison, US and European drinking water levels of arsenic comply with the standard of 10 parts per billion maximum (which works out to 10 μg of arsenic per liter). So 30 years of drinking 2 liters a day of this water will accumulate around 110 mg of arsenic in your body.

Note: some types of rice have a lot of arsenic, like American long grain rice which has 26 μg of arsenic per 100 gram portion of rice (ref: 2). So if you have a lot of this rice in your diet (say one 100 gram portion a day on average), your daily arsenic intake will be 10 μg + 26 μg = 36 μg.

So this CFS treatment that gives you an extra 51 mg of arsenic will increase your total accumulated body load of arsenic from 110 mg to 161 mg.

This website on arsenic in drinking water gives the lifetime risks of getting cancer from arsenic in tap water. As you can see, the risk increases as the concentration of arsenic in the water in part per billion (ppb) increases.

Arsenic Level . . . . . . Approximate Lifetime Cancer
in Tap Water . . . . . . Risk From Arsenic in Drinking Water

0.5 ppb . . . . . . . . . . 1 in 10,000
1 ppb . . . . . . . . . . . 1 in 5,000
3 ppb . . . . . . . . . . . 1 in 1,667
4 ppb . . . . . . . . . . . 1 in 1,250
5 ppb . . . . . . . . . . . 1 in 1,000
10 ppb . . . . . . . . . . 1 in 500
20 ppb . . . . . . . . . . 1 in 250
25 ppb . . . . . . . . . . 1 in 200
50 ppb . . . . . . . . . . 1 in 100

So at present water supply levels of arsenic at 10 ppb, you already have a 1 in 500 lifetime chance of cancer from the arsenic in water.

By taking the above CFS treatment on top of that, this would increase your lifetime arsenic levels a bit, and so make the risk a little more.

In summary, as a guide, the 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), to perhaps something around 1 in 400, or 1 in 300.

This is of course assuming that there are no extra carcinogenic effects arising from an acute higher level exposure to arsenic during treatment; that is to say, the calculation assumes that it is only the total body accumulation of arsenic that counts, as is often assumed.
 
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ukxmrv

Senior Member
Messages
4,413
Location
London
Thanks for such a long detailed reply, Hip!

I've printed it off to digest it in small chunks. Do you know if anyone has been able to track down Walter Tarello? The last I heard he was somewhere in the middle east but that was years ago.
 

Jon_Tradicionali

Alone & Wandering
Messages
291
Location
Zogor-Ndreaj, Shkodër, Albania
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.


•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

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.

Impressive research indeed. I've done my own fair of research on Tarello, but not in the risks involved with arsenic. Mainly because the risks aren't a huge interest to me. The cure is.

Did you manage to get any further into this topic, or perhaps even daring to try it?
 
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Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Impressive research indeed. I've done my own fair of research on Tarello, but not in the risks involved with arsenic. Mainly because the risks aren't a huge interest to me. The cure is.

Did you manage to get any further into this topic, or perhaps even daring to try it?

I dropped this idea, as I am not really sure if this arsenic treatment would have any effect on ME/CFS triggered by viral infection (as mine was). This arsenic treatment was used for a two very unusual cases of ME/CFS which were induced by Staphylococcus bacteremia (blood infection).

If you look at the paper that Tarello wrote about his arsenic treatment, you see his and his wife's blood samples were repeated tested positive for Staphylococcus for 3 years. So this is a clear case of chronic Staphylococcus bacteremia. And they both originally developed ME/CFS from handling animals with Staphylococcus infection-induced ME/CFS. No improvements in their Staphylococcus-induced ME/CFS were obtained using antibiotics, but once they administered low dose potassium arsenite for 10 days, they were both fully cured of their ME/CFS.

The strange things is, I have never come across human Staphylococcus-induced ME/CFS other than in the case of Tarello and his wife. You would think that if Staphylococcus can cause ME/CFS, you would hear about more cases, and you would hear about researchers finding Staphylococcus infections in the blood of a subset of ME/CFS patients. But Tarello and his wife are the only two cases I could find. It does not make sense to me. Why just these two cases?

Certainly if I knew my ME/CFS was caused by Staphylococcus, I would likely take the arsenic cure. But it is not clear if arsenic treatment would have benefits for non-Staphylococcus ME/CFS.


Though I did find this very interesting study (full paper here) about the antiviral effects of arsenic trioxide on coxsackievirus B, a virus strongly associated with ME/CFS. Arsenic trioxide was able to reduce CVB replication in the brain too (most antivirals cannot cross the blood-brain barrier), which might be very significant in terms of treating CVB-associated ME/CFS.
 

maryb

iherb code TAK122
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3,602
Location
UK
But @Hip how many people with ME/CFS actually get tested for Staph? An ND I consulted in the US (I'm in the UK) said I most likely had a chronic staph infection. Sticky eyes most morning, boils etc. I never had any treatment though.
 
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Jon_Tradicionali

Alone & Wandering
Messages
291
Location
Zogor-Ndreaj, Shkodër, Albania
@Hip

Correct, they Definetely had Staph blood infection. Remember why the NIH rejected Lipkins microbiome grant request? 'CFS was a disease caused by a herpes infection of the White blood cells'.

It is entirely credible, as you've clearly pointed out, to theorise that any given treatment, if it works as it has done in this case, may have worked due to eradicating something completely different to your target.

Perhaps Staph is what Tarello was aiming for with the arsenic, but who knows what other pathogen it eradicated?

I have read of others claiming CFS to staph. Below is a link of one of the earlier studies on this subject:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12413434/

Symptoms improved significantly but maintained injections were required to prevent relapse.

Another thread on Staph and CFS:
http://forums.phoenixrising.me/index.php?threads/staph-vaccine-to-treat-cfs.3788/

Perhaps dose was too low to eradicate it once and for all? However, The arsenic was lethal enough to achieve this?
 

snowathlete

Senior Member
Messages
5,374
Location
UK
I covered some of Tarrelo's work in a zoonoses article a way back a couple of years ago. I got in contact with him at the time. Very nice man and very smart and experienced. A vet but a lot of vets are actually very knowledgable and because it's animals these arsenic based drugs are more used than they are on humans. They are toxic, but if you know you have what you've seen in animals and what cured them then you can understand why he took the drug and in his case it worked well and was worth it. But yes it is a heavy drug so it's not like deciding to take a vitamin tablet or a probiotic. If it worked it would be well worth it as although toxic it isn't out if the question. People see the word arsenic and think poison but it's not straight arsenic . However, Without human trials it's quite a leap if your CFS is not clearly linked to an exposure of the type Dr Tarello's was. I wish there was a human trial but probably difficult to run such a trial even if you could raise the funding knowing as little as we do about ME/CFS.

Say Lipkin or someone else finds a pathogen, then we can look at what way to kill it and maybe this would then be worth revisiting.