–TACT2 will test chelation in heart attack patients with diabetes. The NIH has agreed to fund a second round of a highly controversial study testing the possible benefits of chelation therapy in heart attack patients with diabetes. The second Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT2), now recruiting patients at more than 100 clinical sites, is…
Search Results for: chelation
Second Trial Of Controversial Chelation Therapy Gains Crucial Early Support
September 28, 2015 by 3 Comments
The National Institutes of Health is giving money to support the planning of a second trial to test the potential role of chelation therapy in treating patients with myocardial infarction. The first Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) was extremely controversial. It was funded by the NIH more than a dozen ago as part of an initiative to…
TACT Substudy Suggests Possible Strong Benefit for Chelation in Diabetics
November 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment
One year ago the results of the TACT trial were published in JAMA, sparking an enormous controversy over the propriety of publishing a trial suggesting that chelation therapy might be beneficial in people with cardiovascular disease. Chelation therapy has long been a staple of alternative medicine, but until the publication of TACT it had received no credit whatsoever in…
A Guide To The Raging Debate Over The NIH’s TACT Chelation Trial
April 2, 2013 by 7 Comments
(Updated) The publication in JAMA of the NIH’s Trial To Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) trial has provoked a fascinating debate in the blogosphere. The vast majority of responsible physicians and healthcare professionals have little interest in chelation therapy per se, but the TACT trial has raised many important questions about the nature of medical evidence. Here’s a brief…
Controversial NIH Chelation Trial Published In JAMA
March 26, 2013 by Leave a Comment
Final results of the troubled NIH-sponsored TACT trial testing chelation therapy for coronary disease have now been published in JAMA. Last November, when the preliminary results were presented at the American Heart Association meeting, the positive finding in favor of chelation therapy surprised many observers, though the investigators and senior AHA representatives expressed considerable caution about the proper…
NIH Trial Gives Surprising Boost To Chelation Therapy
November 4, 2012 by 3 Comments
With a result that is likely to surprise and baffle much of the mainstream medical community, a large NIH-sponsored trial has turned up the first substantial evidence in support of chelation therapy for patients with coronary disease. Known as TACT (Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy), the highly controversial trial was presented today at the AHA by Gervasio…
Enrollment resumed in controversial NIH chelation trial
June 11, 2009 by 1 Comment
Enrollment has resumed in the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT), a large and controversial $30-million NIH study, according to an AP story by Marilynn Marchione. Last year in August the trial was suspended when the Office for Human Research Protections received complaints about consent forms and safety issues. The suspension was originally reported in…
The Simple Truth About Fake Medical News
December 22, 2018 by 4 Comments
Note: This is a slightly revised version of a talk I delivered at the recent CVCT Conference in Washington, DC. Why are we vulnerable to fake news and why is it so hard to get rid of it? This is a complex question, but one important factor is that fake news delivers clear and simple…
Case Closed: Multivitamins Should Not Be Used
December 16, 2013 by 1 Comment
The editorialists are fed up: “Enough is enough.” Writing about three new papers in the Annals of Internal Medicine that find no benefits for the use of multivitamins — only the latest in a long line of negative findings — Eliseo Guallar and colleagues write: …we believe that the case is closed— supplementing the diet of well-nourished adults with (most)…
TACT Principal Investigator Reflects On A Long And Contentious Journey
November 19, 2013 by Leave a Comment
In a fascinating and important blog post, Gervasio Lamas offers a deeply personal perspective on the long and contentious journey of the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT), for which he was the principal investigator. Here are a few quotes from his post, but I can’t urge you strongly enough to read the entire post over…
2012 In Review: A Bad Year For Conventional Wisdom
December 24, 2012 by 3 Comments
This was a really grim year for anyone who thought we had things pretty well figured out. Time and again conventional wisdom was thrown out the window. 2012 forced the cardiology community to reconsider what it thought it knew about HDL cholesterol, platelet function tests, aspirin resistance, triple therapy, IABP, and more. One device company,…
L.A. Confidential: Preview Of AHA Scientific Sessions 2012
October 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment
The American Heart Association scientific sessions, which start next weekend in Los Angeles, will be bigger than ever, with 853 separate sessions– 111 more than last year– and 27 late-breaking clinical trials– 6 more than last year. Elliott Antman, chair of the scientific sessions program committee, provided a preview of some of the highlights of this…
News Briefs: Cholesterol Trends, AHA Late-Breakers, FDA Updates On Rivaroxaban And Heartware HVAD
September 7, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Cholesterol Trends The Centers for Disease Control issued a new report with the latest details about the prevalence of cholesterol screening and high blood cholesterol in US adults. Here is their summary of the key findings: …cholesterol screening increased from 72.7% in 2005 to 76.0% in 2009, whereas the percentage of those screened who reported…
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