It's no better than placebo treatment
　　A recent clinical trial of a popular alternative treatment for heart disease shows that chelation works no better than placebo treatments for improving symptoms of the disease.
　　Chelation has long been sanctioned as a treatment for heavy-metal poisoning. Chemicals such as EDTA latch onto metals in the body and the bound-up toxins are then eliminated. Injections of such chelating agents purportedly break up the calcified fatty plaques that clog arteries and contribute to heart disease.

Some proponents, however, tout the treatment as a cure-all, saying it reverses aging, improves vision, hearing, smell and muscle coordination, and that it can treat arthritis, impotence, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, psoriasis and Alzheimer's disease, among other conditions.

To test the treatment, Dr. D. George Wyse and researchers from the University of Calgary in Canada worked with members of an alternative-medicine group that advocates chelation therapy. The 84 heart patients tested were assigned chelation or dummy injections at random. After six months, "there was absolutely no difference between the two groups," Wyse says. A wire service story from the San Francisco Chronicle describes the study.
　　
　　From HealthScout