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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

In case anyone is wondering what Chuck Norris has to do with all this:

> Chuck and Gena Norris filed a lawsuit against several medical companies in 2017, alleging that a gadolinium-based contrast agent used in Gena Norris's MRIs caused her to develop a condition called gadolinium deposition disease and resulted in debilitating symptoms like cognitive issues, pain, and muscle wasting. In January 2020, the Norrises, along with their attorneys, voluntarily dismissed the lawsuit with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled. The dismissal was made without a settlement payment, and each party paid their own legal costs.

It might give a glimpse into his worldview to mention that during the COVID pandemic Mr Norris shared an article on social media that claimed that the COVID vaccinations killed millions of people. [0]

[0] https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=870953857718632&...

I mean there have been no reported cases of NSF in the last ten years after certain gadolinium agents were removed from the market.
Brag-worthy!
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...
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.
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.

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.

Which country do you live in?

Here in Germany you have to sign something if they give you "stuff" informing you of possible risks. Something that always exists.

Literally every single medical procedure, down to the most mundane, has risks.

That's why we don't give MRI's out the wazoo. We actually gatekeep them a lot, and most research will tell you that investigative MRIs without chief complaints are a bad idea and we don't do them.

I had cancer. I had no MRIs, but multiple CT and PET scans. CT scans and PET scans have risk - they don't just do those for kicks. But you know what else has risks? Cancer. So there's a calculus here.

Every single medical procedure, down to getting your blood drawn, has this calculus. Nothing is risk free.

Around 10 years ago, I had an brain MRI with contrast. I specifically googled it and found a paper saying it builds up in the brain. I asked the MRI specialist about it, she was surprised I knew this and said she was familiar with the research. She mentioned that her professor also knew about it, but that the paper had other motivations, some conflict of interest, and that I shouldn't be worried. FFS.
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....

Thanks - I've put that link in the toptext above. I'm not sure it makes sense to swap out the submitted URL with it. Hopefully people will take a look at both.
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.
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.

Can you please share more?
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

1. The correction doesn’t invalidate that previous study at all

2. I fail to see how the previous study is an “underpinning” of the new paper. The new paper is a chemistry paper about dissociation of GBCAs in the presence of certain chemicals. Maybe people care because it is a potential explanation for toxicity, but the paper is very focused on the chemistry findings.

I think the thing to remember with this, as with any kind of medical procedure, is the benefits versus the risks. In many cases, if you're getting this kind of MRI contrast, there's probably a good reason for it. So even if there's some risk, it might be better than say, the cancer or something else they're looking for. I feel like this is something that's often forgot in these discussions.
The link between NSF and gadolinium-based agents has been known for almost two decades and is common knowledge in the industry.
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.
I find it odd that when I happen across an article talking about some negative links between x and y being discovered, there's always someone in the comments saying this was known for some decades.
My son had an MRI with gadolinium- turns out he is allergic to it, he developed a full-body itchy rash. There were like 20 interns in to see him, for the experience I guess. They were ready to send him to the ER in case it interfered with his breathing, luckily it didn't.
That would have been frightening. Did it require treatment beyond antihistamine?

I’ve given MR contrast to patients a lot of times (probably tens of thousands) and have seen hives and rashes a handful of times but vastly more often with iodinated contrast in X-ray procedures (usually CT).

This happened to me with iodinated CT contrast

Every square inch of my body was hives for 2 weeks

My kidney function was abnormal for 2 weeks as well and later I was like urinating out goop

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.

> Nobody told me gadolinium can be retained before I had it the first couple times.

The reason these publications exist is that this is new knowledge

> Like somebody else mentioned, they swore up and down it's perfectly safe.

I am positive that you were not told that '[gadolinium] is perfectly safe' because there is a well-known complication of gadolinium administration. It's rare, but it's mentioned in every consent form.

As someone with CKD and scheduled for an MRI, this was anxiety-inducing.

The Cleveland Clinic has a good overview[1]. Since there have been no reports of NSF in 15 years, I don't think it's rational to avoid MRIs based on gadolinium retention concerns.

[1] https://www.ormanager.com/briefs/study-mri-contrast-agent-ca...

I had an MRI with contrast once. I remember the gadolinium injection made me extremely nauseous for a few minutes, but otherwise it has had zero effect on me personally.

Some sad advice: don't ask doctors about this, my experience is that it will cause them to write you off as a crazy person no matter how you bring it up. Many of them lump this in with what they see as "influencer illnesses", whether fairly or not.

And maybe more practically, if you really need an MRI, whatever you might have is much more likely to hurt you.

My kid went to brain MRI because of migraines (standard procedure here for kids to check if there is e.g. a tumor causing the headache). I was pretty nervous due to this kind of research and the preparatory material saying that they might need to use a contrast agent. In the end they didn’t use a contrast agent and I stressed unnecessarily.
There are risks with every procedure and medication.

A dose of ibuprofen could give you Stevens–Johnson syndrome or TENS and you end up in a burn war for months.

Patients should be made aware of all the risks for any treatment, but it would be impossible to avoid they edge cases even with relatively basic medical care.

I recently had an MRI with contrast and didn't read up on it until I got home from the MRI. Apparently they used the linear molecule with the higher tendency to disassociate and deposit Gd. Great.

The most annoying thing though was the vague instruction to "drink plenty of water" given by the MRI tech on the way out. No, you do not drink "plenty of water". You drink something like 1L above your normal fluid intake in the first hour(?) after the procedure. You should also go in well-hydrated.

I swear the quality of medical care in the US just keeps going down, and I'm in a "quality" health system in a rich coastal city.

There's a subreddit, created August 2024, discussing this: https://www.reddit.com/r/GadoliniumToxicity/
Great. Only this year, I got roughly 6 doses of gadlinium, and prior to that, I got one every year, going back 20 years. I just recently chatted with a MRI nurse about the fact that I have a bad feeling about getting that stuff so frequently over time, and she dismissed my concerns. They used to remind patients to drink more after the MRI, but even that routine has been ended roughly 5 years ago. Is there anything else I can do except drink more on the day of the injection?
Gadolinium has killed many many people. Many healthy people like me became chronically ill due to Gadolinium based contrast agent. We all had healthy bodies no history of kidney issues. One dosage of gadolinium contrast and the body couldn’t handle the toxic element which is a heavy metal for the body. The body is not designed to remove this on its own. It destroys the tissue it contacts with. FDA has to pull this poison out.
Note that MRI with contrast has very low risk and I am not aware of any evidence that Gadolinium retention even has adverse health effects. It is a concern though and this is why it is being studied. But I do not think the use of MRI contrast agents is something anybody without kidney disease should be concerned about. In general, risks and benefits must be balanced for any medical procedure. Such risks are continuously monitored and studied and guidelines are formulated based on this. Also consider that there is very clear harm from people being scared away by misinformation from medical procedures they would benefit from.
Interesting to see this on HN. I was part of the research group which published this back in 2015 [1], I think we were the second group worldwide to publish this.

So, first off, this is not new. The linked publication here mainly seems to be explaining a potential mechanism of how it might happen.

Some quick notes to aid in a constructive discussion - bear with me, it's been a while and I've left research and since worked as a software developer, chuckle:

- Different gadolinium agents have vastly different "buildup" characteristics - some are better, some are worse. Biochemically, the ones where the gadolinium was trapped in harder "complexes", those were more stable (less accumulation). I suck at biochemistry, so all of those words may be wrong.

- If you'd want to over-engineer this, you could indeed select your MRI hospital / practice based on which gadolinium agent they use.

- Unless you're getting a ton of MRIs (think multiple sclerosis monitoring etc.), you probably won't be affected.

- Most MRIs are without contrast agent anyway, so you probably won't be affected.

- The last I heard was that the clinical implications were still being investigated - like, yeah, you do see a buildup of gadolinium in patients who 1) get certain gadolinium agents and 2) have a ton of MRIs, but what does that mean they'll suffer any clinical consequences from this? Not sure. I heard that there was a paper (.. somewhere) which at least showed a correlation with worse MS outcomes of people who had a high buildup, but then again, cause-effect here is not clear as people with worse MS tend to have more MRIs, too (correlation != causation).

[1] https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/full/10.1148/radiol.2015150337

It seems only patients with advanced renal disease are effected. So, my suggestion, no Gad in patients with increased Creatine (even Stage I renal disease).
I thought the point was that the double bonded agents stick together and are just excreted and the bonds don't easily get broken at all.

I thought the problem was with older agents there were single bonds that could be broken in the chain and that's what can cause the build-up.

But I was under the impression those were phased out over a decade ago.

So is this saying even the strong double-bonded ones are somehow building up in some way we don't understand?

It's also been known forever that these agents are riskier in patients with kidney failure, and that's directly factored into the algorithms doctors use and has been forever.

So.... what's the point of this? Is it rage-bait?

This isn’t newly known, but it’s convenient to stay with the comfortably familiar until the better alternative is forced.
What about CT-SCAN contrast?
Sometimes I wonder if metals in the body can pick up cellphone signals.
EDTA
If it was healthy hospitals and doctors would call it what it is instead of just saying "its contrast"
EDTA DMSO DMSA Vitamin C