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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...

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

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.

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....

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

The link between NSF and gadolinium-based agents has been known for almost two decades and is common knowledge in the industry.

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.

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.

There's a subreddit, created August 2024, discussing this: https://www.reddit.com/r/GadoliniumToxicity/

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.

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

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.

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.

If it was healthy hospitals and doctors would call it what it is instead of just saying "its contrast"

Sometimes I wonder if metals in the body can pick up cellphone signals.

This isn’t newly known, but it’s convenient to stay with the comfortably familiar until the better alternative is forced.

EDTA

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?

EDTA DMSO DMSA Vitamin C

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?

What about CT-SCAN contrast?

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).

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.