title: Different approaches to the study of chelating agents for iron and aluminium overload pathologies.
abstract: Our objective is to illustrate the activity of the groups operating in Italy involved in identification and study of new chelating agents, mainly intended for treatment of human pathology correlated with metal overload. The objective of "chelation therapy" is removal of toxic metal ions from the human body or attenuation of their toxicity by transforming them into less toxic compounds or by dislocating them from the site at which they exert a toxic action. Because most of this research activity is related to chelating agents for iron and aluminium, diseases related to these two metal ions are briefly treated. Iron overload is the most common metal toxicity disease worldwide. The toxicity of aluminium in dialysis patients was a serious problem for haemodialysis units in the seventies and eighties of the last century. In particular, this review focuses on research performed by the group at Cagliari and Ferrara, and by that at Padova. The former is studying, above all, bisphosphonate and kojic acid derivatives, and the latter is investigating 3,4-hydroxypyridinecarboxylic acids with differently substituted pyridinic rings.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Chimiche e Geologiche, Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Monserrato-Cagliari, Italy. crisponi@unica.it
authors.forename: Guido
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Crisponi
authors.forename: Annalisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Dean
authors.forename: Valerio
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Di Marco
authors.forename: Joanna I
authors.initials: JI
authors.lastname: Lachowicz
authors.forename: Valeria M
authors.initials: VM
authors.lastname: Nurchi
authors.forename: Maurizio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Remelli
authors.forename: Andrea
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tapparo
mesh_terms: D000535:Aluminum / Q000378:metabolism*; D000818:Animals; D002614:Chelating Agents / Q000378:metabolism / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D006801:Humans; D007501:Iron / Q000378:metabolism*; D019190:Iron Overload / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000378:metabolism; D008659:Metabolic Diseases / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D002614:Chelating Agents; D000535:Aluminum; D007501:Iron