Chemistry of Chelation: Chelating Agent Antagonists for Toxic Metals

Abstract

The chemistry of chelation is involved in some very important aspects of the toxicology of metals. The first is that toxic metals exert many of their adverse biological effects by forming metal complexes with enzymes, DNA, or other molecules found within cells. Such metal chelate complexes have properties which differ in some important respects from the enzyme or DNA that they contain. This has the result that metal binding can inactivate enzymes. We also find that such chelate complexes are probably responsible for the carcinogenicity of certain chromium compounds which react with DNA. Another quite different aspect is the use of exogenous chelating agents as drugs in order to remove toxic metals from the sites to which they are bound in vivo.KeywordsToxic MetalLipoic AcidBlood Lead LevelChelate AgentDimercaptosuccinic AcidThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.