Guest guest Posted March 10, 2007 Report Share Posted March 10, 2007 Dear I recently had to dispose of 5 Kg of arsenic trioxide, I should have saved you some and we could have reminisced while in jail together. On another note, a quick search on Arsenic + pharmacology in Google scholar brings up some pretty depressing reading. Regards Windsor [infections] Re: Arsenic - Tarello By the way, in case anyone needs to be told this... this is a highly experimental and potentially dangerous treatment idea... not something anyone should consider acting on without a doctor's advice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 10, 2007 Report Share Posted March 10, 2007 Legality is tricky in the U.S. The FDA has approved arsenic therapy only for leukemia so far. However, I was told that Arizona has more liberal laws than the rest of the U.S. and that it might be legal there. penny <usenethod@...> wrote: Basically I'm interested in seeing whether there is some reason why arsenicals might be particularly lethal against semi-dormant bacteria difficult to kill with most antibiotics.I am even more interested in testing the idea empirically myself. This could be explored using a simple model such as starved E coli. If anyone has a source of potassium arsenate or arsenic trioxide, I'm very interested. I assume they're legal to posses in the US though I haven't checked.This paper is a start. But it doesn't look like the mechanisms of toxicity are terribly clear:http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S037842740200084XHowever, one *possible* major mechanism - reduction of disulfide bonds in existing proteins - looks interesting. This could be quite harmful to a non-growing bacterial cell where protein turnover is very limited. Insults of all kinds are probably harder for fast-growing cells to adapt to... but in this case, the fast-growing cells is producing new proteins at a high rate, so damage to a number of proteins at a fixed rate might not create quite so much of an insult in the first place. But - *will* that damage occur at a fixed rate? Or will it instead occur at a rate dependent on the rate of the bacterial metabolism?Protein turnover in relatively static/dormant bug would be limited further if tetracyclines and macrolides were applied, and perhaps rifampin. These agents would also impair the induction of arsenic detoxification proteins.I do see some web page out there claiming that arsenicals were used to treat neurasthenia, which is, roughly, CFS. Maybe not true, but if true it wouldn't surprise me. Immunosuppressive effects might possibly be at play here as well as antimicrobial and perhaps other effects.I haven't yet looked into whether there is any dose which can be considered to probably be wholly non-carcinogenic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted March 12, 2007 Report Share Posted March 12, 2007 Dear Tony A little bit of history, it had been handed down since the great Prickly Pear invasion of the late 1800's and early 1900's and when the family farm was sold a little while back, it turned up, complete with instructions. Regards R [infections] Re: Arsenic - Tarello> > > By the way, in case anyone needs to be told this... this is a highly > experimental and potentially dangerous treatment idea... not something > anyone should consider acting on without a doctor's advice.> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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