Aluminium based adjuvants and a disease hypothesis by Gherardi

[Valentijn]

"The aluminium content of brain tissues from 5 donors who died with a diagnosis of ASD was found to be extraordinarily high, some of the highest values yet measured in human brain tissue."

This says nothing about the source of the aluminum, nor about cause and effect, even if assuming the results are accurate and representative. It's a very small sample size, nothing is said about the cause of death (which is presumably not Autism itself), and there's no controls. And I'm fairly sure the authors are referring to their own previous work when they say the values were high compared to previous measurements, since they seem to think no one else has ever measured aluminum content in brains.

Edited to add: It looks the article may not have been effectively peer-reviewed, due to one author also being on the journal's editorial board. https://respectfulinsolence.com/201...e-to-demonize-aluminum-adjuvants-in-vaccines/ raises similar issues to the ones I made above, including that the stain is not specific to aluminum, the aluminum concentrations found were actually pretty normal compared to other studies involving Alzheimer's, and their previous work showed some huge variations in retests of single samples which makes their methodology rather suspect.

Another blog delved even deeper into the technical aspects of this study at https://scientistabe.wordpress.com/...m-exley-show-a-link-between-asd-and-aluminum/ "Bottom line: The fluorescence microscopy is dodgy, and it is vastly overinterpreted. That doesn’t even take into account the nonexistent to weak statistics in the paper."

These researchers are quacks on par with the BPS brigade.

 

[currer]

Hi Valentijn the source of the aluminium is discussed in Professor Exley's blog.

https://www.hippocraticpost.com/infection-disease/aluminium-and-autism/

"The new evidence strongly suggests that aluminium is entering the brain in ASD via pro-inflammatory cells which have become loaded up with aluminium in the blood and/or lymph, much as has been demonstrated for monocytes at injection sites for vaccines including aluminium adjuvants. Perhaps we now have the putative link between vaccination and ASD, the link being the inclusion of an aluminium adjuvant in the vaccine."

The following quotes from the paper relate to the transport into the brain of aluminium via imune cells, and makes the suggestion that sufferers from ASD may be more prone to accumulate aluminium in this way than others.

"Aluminium is cytotoxic [21] and its association herein with inflammatory cells in the vasculature, meninges and central nervous system is unlikely to be benign."
"In addition the suggestion from the data herein that aluminium entry into the brain via immune cells circulating in the blood and lymph is expedited in ASD"

 

[Guest 3]

Aluminium is not a part of any biological reaction in plants or animals and only became biologically available once humans developed the technology to purify the ores - about one hundred years ago. Prior to this aluminium was usually always found bound to oxygen and silicon and was biologically unavailable. People were not normally exposed to elemental aluminium

That statement is ridiculous in so many ways.

Aluminium is found in compounds not alone in nature. Does this prove aluminium adjuvants cause disease?

Lots of things are cytotoxic, provide some actual proof for your statements apart from Exley.

Highlighting things in differerent colours is not proof.

 

[Valentijn]

https://www.hippocraticpost.com/infection-disease/aluminium-and-autism/

"The new evidence strongly suggests that aluminium is entering the brain in ASD via pro-inflammatory cells which have become loaded up with aluminium in the blood and/or lymph, much as has been demonstrated for monocytes at injection sites for vaccines including aluminium adjuvants. Perhaps we now have the putative link between vaccination and ASD, the link being the inclusion of an aluminium adjuvant in the vaccine."

He seems to be referring to the same study which has been pretty well debunked, and provides no evidence of the source any aluminum which is found. His assumptions are not evidence.

 

[TiredSam]

The folowing paper discusses Guam, an island with an unusual soil chemistry.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24202289

Aluminium and calcium in soil and food from Guam, Palau and Jamaica: Implications for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and parkinsonism-dementia syndromes of Guam.
Crapper McLachlarf DR1, McLachlan CD, Krishnan B, Krishnan SS, Dalton AJ, Steele JC.
Author information

Abstract
Low calcium and high aluminium concentrations in the soils, waters and native foods have been hypothesised as environmental factors contributing to the unusually high incidence of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and parkinsonism with dementia (ALS-PD) found on the island of Guam. The amounts of elemental aluminium and calcium were measured in foods of the native diet of the Chamorro people of Guam. The amount of aluminium eluted from topsoil by water at pH 7 at 22 °C was also measured. For comparison, food, water and soil samples were collected from two islands which have not reported a high incidence of ALS-PD syndromes: Palau and Jamaica.Compared with agricultural soils of Jamaica or Palau, the agricultural soils of Guam averaged 42-fold higher yield of elutable aluminium. The food data, however, do not indicate a differentially high exposure to elemental aluminium or low calcium intake in the diet of any one population. While this study did not detect an unusually high dietary aluminium or low dietary calcium content, the soils and possibly the dusts of Guam may be a major source of aluminium entering the body of the native people, particularly through the respiratory epithelium. Since iipid soluble organic ligands of aluminium more readily penetrate epithelial membranes, further study of soil aluminium ligands is required.

This is just ridiculous. Do the residents of Guam have a lot of aluminium in them or not?

While this study did not detect an unusually high dietary aluminium or low dietary calcium content, the soils and possibly the dusts of Guam may be a major source of aluminium entering the body of the native people

And if they do, anyone looking for sources of aluminium in Guam is very remiss if they don't even consider the amount of Spam they eat and what that Spam is packaged in:

http://www.guampdn.com/story/money/...ce-guam-and-spam-generations-later/501787001/

When it comes to tinned luncheon meats, Guam and the Pacific region reign supreme.

Guam residents each consume an average of 16 cans of Spam-brand tinned ham per year, according to local distributors Dickerson and Quinn. That doesn't count other brands, like Libby, Armour, and Tulip. Nor does that include tinned corned beef, which enjoys a thriving Pacific market.

Agat resident Mary Babauta calls these food staples "a thing of the island."

"You go to every house, and it's in the cabinet. You can convert that into everything," Babauta said. "Go to Hawaii and they do the same."

I'm afraid I don't have a video, but here is a picture of a tin of Spam:

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

With regard to the above remark, I think we need to consider the new research on aluminium content in the brains of boys who died with a diagnosis of autism. The levels of aluminium in the brains are very high, and the aluminium has clearly been transported into the brain by immune cells from a vaccination site.

No adequately trained medical student is going to take that study seriously.

You may not realise, currer, that these days anyone can do any sort of half-baked 'experiment' and publish it as a 'scientific study'. To be meaningful studies need to have basic components like adequate controls and background theories have to be credible on other grounds.

No serious scientist produces videos like this or encourages people to post stuff on social media.

The whole point of science is to discover that the answer to a question is NOT WHAT YOU THOUGHT IT WAS GOING TO BE. If it is what you thought it was going to be then you have learned nothing. Science is about learning new things. Unfortunately a substantial minority of people who find themselves in scientific research do not understand this and spend their lives trying to prove the answer is what they thought it was. This seems to be a case in point.

 

[currer]

The criticism du jour of Dr. Exley's work is that there are no healthy controls to compare the autism brains to. I'm including a response here from Dr. Exley on this topic:

“Our measurements of Al in human tissue are the most respected anywhere and the reasons for this are our attention to all details and specifically extraneous contamination... Please see the Metallomics paper cited in our paper to provide a specifc response to this.
Our quantitative analyses on the brains of 5 individuals represent the ONLY donors available at the autism brain bank in the UK. We discussed control tissues but the only available were not age-matched and nor were they true controls as the donors were individuals in their 40s and 50s who died of a certain disease or condition. No age-matched healthy donor brain tissues were available. However, we have more data on the Al content of human brain tissue than anyone else and so we are in a position to compare our autism data with other data relating to almost 100 human brains. This is how we can come to our judgement that the values measured were some of the highest values ever measured in any individuals. No one questioned similar data published this time last year for familial AD.”

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

The criticism du jour of Dr. Exley's work is that there are no healthy controls to compare the autism brains to. I'm including a response here from Dr. Exley on this topic:

Yes, I have read that. A serious scientist does not get themselves into a situation where they have to produce an unconvincing excuse like this. They do things properly from the start. The more one reads of this stuff the clearer it is that this is not serious science.

 

[lansbergen]

The new evidence strongly suggests that aluminium is entering the brain in ASD via pro-inflammatory cells which have become loaded up with aluminium in the blood and/or lymph

Why do the pro-inflammatory cells go there?

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

Why do the pro-inflammatory cells go there?

There is no such thing as a pro-inflammatory cell. This is the level of the text.

 

[Wonko]

There is no such thing as a pro-inflammatory cell. This is the level of the text.

That's a good thing then, if all of the aluminium is bound up in pro-inflammatory cells, and pro-inflammatory cells don't actually exist - problem solved, nothing to worry about.

 

[currer]

Are you trying to get people to believe that finding high levels of aluminium in a fifteen year-old's brain is quite normal and nothing to be concerned about?

Metal in our brains is OK?

There is no pathology here?

 

[currer]

The causes, diagnosis and treatment of aluminum toxicity in patients with chronic renal failure undergoing dialysis.
[Article in Chinese]
Wang G1, Zhu P, Wang S.
Author information

Abstract
To study the causes, diagnosis and treatment of aluminum toxicity in patients with chronic renal failure, the serum aluminum concentration was determined in 27 normal subjects, 28 patients of various kinds of diseases with normal renal function and 81 patients of chronic renal failure with hemodialysis in 65 and without in 16, of whom 41 patients were determined the aluminum concentration in the bone tissue. Clinical symptoms were carefully observed in all patients and desferrioxamine (DFO) test was performed in 17 patients, of whom 10 were treated with DFO. The results showed that treatment with improperly processed water and administration of aluminum compound were the major causes of aluminum toxicity in uremic patients. Aluminum toxicity may induce anemia, encephalopathy and bone disease, but its clinical features were nonspecific and the diagnosis may require several serum aluminum determinations or DFO test. DFO can chelate aluminum in a variety of tissues so that the latter may be released into the blood circulation. The DFO test may be used to assess the actual aluminum load in the bone tissue. The changes in serum aluminum concentration after intravenous infusion of DFO correlated closely with bone aluminum level, suggesting that the DFO test may be useful for the diagnosis of aluminum toxicity. The DFO therapy may be indicated for, 1, patients with uremia having hyperaluminumnemia due to treatment with improperly processed water and intake of aluminum-containing agents. 2. those who had serum aluminum concentration of higher than 200 micrograms/L and positive DFO test and 3. patients whose aluminum concentration in the bone tissue was 10 times greater than normal values. In this study, DFO was given intravenously in a dose of 20-40 mg/kg, twice a week. Satisfactory results were obtained in 3 to 6 months and there were no severe side effects when the agent was administered slowly.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9275645

 

[TiredSam]

The criticism du jour of Dr. Exley's work is

That's rather a dismissive phrase. "Criticism du jour" indeed, like it's a passing fad or something. How about "One criticism of Dr. Exley's work is ... "

Are you trying to get people to believe that finding high levels of aluminium in a fifteen year-old's brain is quite normal and nothing to be concerned about?

Nobody said that.

You seem to be trying to get people to believe something, so the onus is on you to provide evidence. So far your only response to questions is to throw more Dr Exley quotes and videos at people. Are you familiar with the phrase "Gish gallop"? If you choose to adopt Dr Exley's belief system that's up to you, but you haven't provided any reasons why anyone else should.

 

[currer]

Metals that are commonly screened for toxicity include lithium, aluminum and the heavy metals lead, arsenic, cadmium and mercury.

Unfortunately, patients with renal failure are susceptible to aluminum toxicity. They cannot remove the aluminum and, as the water used in dialysis may contain aluminum that can enter the body through the dialysis membrane, the metal can build up to toxic concentrations and cause osteodystrophy and encephalopathy. Aluminum toxicity is diagnosed by determining its concentration in plasma. Chronic toxicity occurs at concentrations above only 3 Mmol dm–3 whereas 10 Mmol dm–3 can cause acute poisoning. The treatment is aimed mainly at prevention. When aluminum poisoning does occur, then its excretion may be enhanced using chelating agents such as desferrioxamine.

http://www.brainkart.com/article/Metals---Toxicology-Poisons_16342/

 

[Liv aka Mrs Sowester]

Unfortunately, patients with renal failure are susceptible to aluminum toxicity.

To be fair I'd imagine aluminium isn't the only toxicity people with renal failure are susceptible to.

 

[Valentijn]

We discussed control tissues but the only available were not age-matched and nor were they true controls as the donors were individuals in their 40s and 50s who died of a certain disease or condition. No age-matched healthy donor brain tissues were available.

Having an excuse for the lack of controls does not make uncontrolled research any more reliable. It is substandard regardless of the reason that controls were not used.

However, we have more data on the Al content of human brain tissue than anyone else and so we are in a position to compare our autism data with other data relating to almost 100 human brains.

This isn't really relevant to the issue of equipment or other measurement errors, human error, or human bias. If there is a problem with equipment, it would give similarly high results for controls, and it would be apparent that no conclusion could be reached regarding the findings in the patients. Or that the other metals detected by their method were skewing the results. Similarly, it sounds like a lot of human interpretation is involved in some measurements, which introduces the opportunity for inadvertent researcher bias to influence the results when there are no controls and accordingly no blinding of samples.

The other issue is that it sounds like the measurements in their previous work were unreliable. For example, they would test the same sample three times, and get two low levels and one very high level. While it might be possible this is due to metals being very unevenly distributed even in the same tissue sample, at the very least it requires some rigorous evaluation to make sure that flukes aren't occurring due to instrument or measurement error of some sort.

Are you trying to get people to believe that finding high levels of aluminium in a fifteen year-old's brain is quite normal and nothing to be concerned about?

It's a logical fallacy to misstate someone's argument as a way to refute what they are really saying. What we are saying is that there is not reliable evidence that 1) aluminum levels in anyone's brain were very high, 2) that any aluminum elevation was related to autism, or 3) that vaccines cause any aluminum elevation in brains.

 

[Barry]

Having an excuse for the lack of controls does not make uncontrolled research any more reliable. It is substandard regardless of the reason that controls were not used.

Exactly. Not being able to find a repair shop open to mend your car's brakes, is not an excuse to drive with no brakes.

 

[John Mac]

Merged thread

Biopersistence and brain translocation of aluminum adjuvants of vaccines 2015 Gherardi et al

Aluminum oxyhydroxide (alum) is a crystalline compound widely used as an immunological adjuvant of vaccines. Concerns linked to the use of alum particles emerged following recognition of their causative role in the so-called macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF) lesion detected in patients with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue/syndrome. MMF revealed an unexpectedly long-lasting biopersistence of alum within immune cells in presumably susceptible individuals, stressing the previous fundamental misconception of its biodisposition.
We previously showed that poorly biodegradable aluminum-coated particles injected into muscle are promptly phagocytosed in muscle and the draining lymph nodes, and can disseminate within phagocytic cells throughout the body and slowly accumulate in brain. This strongly suggests that long-term adjuvant biopersistence within phagocytic cells is a prerequisite for slow brain translocation and delayed neurotoxicity.
The understanding of basic mechanisms of particle biopersistence and brain translocation represents a major health challenge, since it could help to define susceptibility factors to develop chronic neurotoxic damage. Biopersistence of alum may be linked to its lysosome-destabilizing effect, which is likely due to direct crystal-induced rupture of phagolysosomal membranes. Macrophages that continuously perceive foreign particles in their cytosol will likely reiterate, with variable interindividual efficiency, a dedicated form of autophagy (xenophagy) until they dispose of alien materials. Successful compartmentalization of particles within double membrane autophagosomes and subsequent fusion with repaired and re-acidified lysosomes will expose alum to lysosomal acidic pH, the sole factor that can solubilize alum particles. Brain translocation of alum particles is linked to a Trojan horse mechanism previously described for infectious particles (HIV, HCV), that obeys to CCL2, signaling the major inflammatory monocyte chemoattractant.


Billions of humans have been vaccinated and marked regression or eradication of several severe infectious diseases was observed. Nowadays, the potential applications of vaccines extend far beyond prevention of infectious diseases, and vaccination is considered to be a most promising weapon against a variety of different conditions. Vaccine safety has been regarded as excellent at the level of the population (1), but adverse effects have also been reported (2).

Concerns about the use of aluminum adjuvants have emerged following (i) recognition of their role at the origin of the so-called macrophagic myofasciitis (MMF) lesion in 2001 (3, 4), which revealed fundamental misconception of their adjuvant effect and pointed out their unexpectedly long-lasting biopersistence (4); and (ii) demonstration of their apparent capacity to migrate in lymphoid organs and then disseminate throughout the body within monocyte-lineage cells and progressively accumulate in the brain (5).

The present paper will review these emerging characteristics of alum adjuvant particles that raise concerns about innocuity of this widely used compound.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2015.00004/full

 

[Amw66]

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fneur.2015.00004/full

Interesting. Vaccines with longer timeframes ( tetanus, hpv, hepatitis etc) have higher levels of adjuvant and some can trace illness back to vaccinations, probably in combination with an infection / stress/ environmental impacts.