Good evening everyone. I’m hoping someone will be able to help answer a question in regard to a case I am currently working up.
The case involves a 39-year-old male with no known medical history who began to have severe paresthesias, and shocking type sensations, to the extremities and face with, at times, loss of sensation to the aforementioned areas. This is accompanied by brain fog, severe fatigue (especially with increased activity throughout the day), joint pains, and frequent GI symptoms such as bloating, cramping, and reflux. He has correlated his symptoms to a post-covid vaccination in mid 202o. He states he received the two-dose regimen, and after the second dose, he noticed some mild paresthesias and fatigue. He assumed these were most likely temporary; however, due to persistence over months, he began to seek medical advice.
It should be noted that the patient is an anesthesiologist and consulted numerous colleagues and specialties, including infectious disease, neuro, internal medicine, etc; over months. He had an extensive battery of tests, ranging from inflammatory markers, autoimmune markers, lumbar puncture testing of CSF for MS and other etiologies (which were all negative), and finally, he had a muscle biopsy of a lower extremity in which he was diagnosed with small nerve fiber neuropathy(SNFN) and placed on prednisone which seemed to minimally suppress the symptoms, but he still experienced mild to moderate symptoms at baseline with increased symptoms upon activity.
He presented to us after numerous consultations that resulted in his dx of SNFN secondary to possible covid 19 vaccination. The symptoms have progressed to the point that he is nearly unable to complete a full 8-10 hour shift of work. We started the patient on a protocol that included addressing rebuilding the gut microbiome, while addressing a high suspicion of mitochondrial dysfunction, using peptides in conjunction with a food plan and complimentary pharmaceuticals. After 6 weeks his GI symptoms resolved, but he had only mild improvement with his fatigue and paresthesias. At this point, the patient was placed on a senolytic protocol that would eventually transition into optimizing mitochondrial function with NAD precursors such as NMN, MOTS-C, and IV NAD infusions. I also added organic acid, and heavy metal testing to look for other possible etiologies.
At this time, the patient hass just started the synolytic protocol, but his metabolic testing returned revealing a Gadolinium level that was 3x the high normal. Looking back, he had multiple MRI/MRA procedures performed and his symptoms seem to correlate with gadolinium toxcity. It is unclear whether his symptoms may have initially started with the vaccination, but were then enhanced and worsened by this heavy metal toxicity, and/or they were strictly related to the gadolinium, but the vaccination was coincidentally administered in a relatively close time frame. Either way, the gadolinium is high, and upon engaging in some research, there does not seem to be a significant amount of literature on the treatment of gadolinium toxicity, other than chelation therapy and some nutraceuticals that are not definitively defined.
My question is: Do you know of a particular protocol, in regard to chelation therapy, nutraceuticals, etc, that you would recommend? Thank you for your time.