[HN Gopher] MRI Contrast Agent Causes Harmful Metal Buildup in S...
___________________________________________________________________
MRI Contrast Agent Causes Harmful Metal Buildup in Some Patients
[study]
Author : nikolay
Score : 39 points
Date : 2025-10-24 20:48 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ormanager.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ormanager.com)
| hereme888 wrote:
| You know what other metal stays in the body, permanently bound to
| bone and other organs? Bismuth, as in bismuth salycilate, aka
| Peptobismol. A tiny % actually stays in your body.
| ToDougie wrote:
| Can you please share more?
| DennisP wrote:
| Does that cause any symptoms? Because apparently this can, and
| they tell you how to avoid it.
|
| > Lead author Dr Brent Wagner told Newsweek he personally
| avoids vitamin C when undergoing MRI with contrast, citing its
| potential to increase gadolinium reactivity. "Metabolic
| milieu," including high oxalic acid levels, could explain why
| some individuals experience severe symptoms while others do
| not, he said.
|
| Avoiding high-oxalic foods for a few days before the MRI also
| seems like a good idea. Just check the diet for calcium oxalate
| kidney stones.
| gclawes wrote:
| Every time I've gotten an MRI the doctors and techs have sworn up
| and down it's impossible for this stuff to stick around. Getting
| tired of not being able to believe what doctors say...
| bamboozled wrote:
| The other day I had to get a CT scan, I was kind of annoyed I
| wasn't offered and MRI, and here we are.
|
| I hold a different opinion to you though, I'm glad doctors are
| always learning more while generally operating with good
| /extremely good intentions.
| byryan wrote:
| Really wish more people had that mind set. Practicing
| medicine isn't easy, especially in the US when you have to
| battle the insane insurance industry.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > I hold a different opinion to you though, I'm glad doctors
| are always learning more while generally operating with good
| /extremely good intentions.
|
| I agree. Expecting perfection from humans, even experts, is
| not reasonable and is frankly counterproductive.
|
| Willful ignorance is one thing, but people who genuinely
| attempt to do the right thing at worst just need to be
| steered slightly differently.
| torstenvl wrote:
| Except that a disturbing number of doctors insist that they
| are always right and you are always wrong.
|
| A year ago, one insisted vehemently--to the point of yelling
| --that I shouldn't be supplementing Vitamin K because my
| _potassium_ levels were fine.
| drum55 wrote:
| That's surprising, it's at least casually known that they're
| bio accumulative to some extent. I've joked to the techs before
| about gadolinium eventually accumulating enough to not be
| necessary if you do it with enough frequency. Realistically
| though any situation that you're doing the contrast you're
| probably at a lot more risk of whatever they've found than from
| the contrast agent.
| smeej wrote:
| I had to have contrast to diagnose a simple cyst, which is
| entirely asymptomatic and was discovered by accident in the
| background of a cardiac MRI (family history of SCD, but my
| own heart is fine).
|
| You're making me feel lucky about what was otherwise a very
| unpleasant experience!
| hammock wrote:
| They said the same thing about mRNA vaccines staying at the
| injection site and degrading quickly.
| https://x.com/Inversionism/status/1690043574644092940
|
| I know my doctors are good people. I just can't understand how
| this happens.
| javascriptfan69 wrote:
| Is this a study in rats? Is there any data beyond 48 hours?
|
| The concentrations outside of the injection site are
| vanishingly small. And I would consider 48 hours to be pretty
| quick. If it was still around after a week I would be
| concerned. Not really sure what I'm supposed to take away
| from this.
| zoeysmithe wrote:
| The data until recently suggested that, so thats the risk you
| take. Would you rather be living in ancient greece and shoved
| full of hemlock leaves for arthritis? Or have a 19th century
| surgeon remove your appendix?
|
| There's risk in life and odds-wise if you're in the developed
| West, you're going to get care and medicine that will greatly
| prolong your life.
|
| Also this paper is super vague. What percent of people even get
| this? How long does it last? They havent even done a study to
| see how long it lasts yet. I have a feeling this isnt going to
| be our generation's asbestos or thalidomide.
|
| That being said, you should decide your own risk profile. If
| MRI gives you concerns there are alternatives that dont involve
| contrast.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| No one is asking to go back to Ancient Greece.
|
| But given our track record, a little humility would go along
| way.
|
| When a highly educated doctor tells you that something is
| safe, a person is going to assume that means that someone
| somewhere has proven that the substance is safe. If what they
| really mean is that no one really knows, but so far, no
| experiments have been able to prove danger, then we should
| say that instead.
| bawolff wrote:
| By that definition, nobody knows anything is safe.
| shakna wrote:
| Or to not click through multiple layers of clickbait:
| https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mri.2025.110383
|
| Unfortunately, the article isn't much better. It has as an
| underpinning, a corrected paper:
| https://doi.org/10.1093/ndt/gfl294
| anon291 wrote:
| The link between NSF and gadolinium-based agents has been known
| for almost two decades and is common knowledge in the industry.
| Neywiny wrote:
| Yes. The problem is that it's common in the industry. But it's
| ultimately up to the patient. Maybe alone. Pretty much
| guaranteed scared. Undereducated, worrying about their likely
| life threatening potential illness or injury. That's basically
| under duress.
| bawolff wrote:
| What are you proposing instead? Should patients just die of
| their illness instead?
|
| Medical procedures have risk, some are small risk some are
| higher risk. There are none that are 100% safe. Doctors are
| supposed to evaluate if the risk is worth the value the
| procedure would supply.
|
| What is the alternative to the status quo that you would
| propose?
| Neywiny wrote:
| There's a big difference between not getting the MRI and
| getting the MRI without gadolinium. My suggestion is to
| ensure that people know the risks _outside_ of just the
| people who work in it. I 'm not sure how that didn't get
| across in my original comment. With your comprehension
| skills, you are at an increased risk of falling victim to
| this exact scenario
| Neywiny wrote:
| This is very interesting to see on here. My mother was the
| dissenting vote on an FDA panel on this. There are articles about
| it. I'll copy her words (as reported by something but seems
| legit)
|
| > She said that the FDA's plan doesn't go far enough.
|
| > "It's hard to dismiss an anecdotal report when you are the
| anecdote. When a patient is finally tested and found to have
| gadolinium retention, there's no FDA-approved antidote. So what
| does the patient do?"
|
| And I want to reiterate that she was "the" no not "a" no. I don't
| know if her vote alone is what's caused more research into this.
| But it's probably the thing I brag about her the most. Even
| though everybody else said it was fine or abstained, she stood
| strong. If you look up the articles from the time of the panel
| (2017) you'll see a lot of articles about this panel and how she
| was the sole no vote. Included in that was a public post from
| Chuck Norris praising her. He was going to come out to meet us
| but I think it was a bad Texas hurricane season so that fell
| through
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Nobody told me gadolinium can be retained before I had it the
| first couple times.
|
| Like somebody else mentioned, they swore up and down it's
| perfectly safe.
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| This is a poor explanation of an older publication, when the
| actual new work has a good description:
|
| https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/toxicology/articles/10....
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-10-24 23:00 UTC)