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Title: INTRAVENOUS MAGNESIUM SULPHATE WITH AND WITHOUT EDTA AS A MAGNESIUM LOAD TEST - IS MAGNESIUM DEFICIENCY WIDESPREAD?

Author
item WATERS, ROBERT - WATERS PREV MED CNTR,WISC
item FERNHOLZ, KAREN - WATERS PREV MED CTR, WISC
item Bryden, Noella
item Anderson, Richard

Submitted to: Journal of the American College of Nutrition
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/1/2008
Publication Date: 7/30/2008
Citation: Waters, R., Fernholz, K., Bryden, N.A., Anderson, R.A. 2008. INTRAVENOUS MAGNESIUM SULPHATE WITH AND WITHOUT EDTA AS A MAGNESIUM LOAD TEST - IS MAGNESIUM DEFICIENCY WIDESPREAD?. Journal of the American College of Nutrition.

Interpretive Summary: Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases have been linked to suboptimal intakes of magnesium. It is postulated that magnesium deficiency is widespread and a recent government study reported that 68% of Americans do not consume the recommended intakes of magnesium and 19% of Americans do not consume even half of the recommended intakes. Our study was designed to determine the prevalence of magnesium deficiency and to determine if the components of solutions used to determine magnesium deficiency alter the retention of magnesium. We demonstrated that using the magnesium load test that magnesium deficiency was widespread and that the components added to the solutions used to determine magnesium deficiency were not the major contributing factors in the determination of magnesium deficiency. People with overt signs of disease were shown to be more magnesium deficient than control subjects but the overwhelming majority of the people tested displayed strong signs of magnesium deficiency. This work will be of importance to the medical community but also the millions of people who are showing signs of magnesium deficiency but are unaware of it.

Technical Abstract: Magnesium deficiency has been linked to a number of clinical conditions including hypertension, myocardial infarction, cardiac dysrhythmias, coronary spasm, premature artherosclerosis and diabetes. Serum/plasma measurements do not reflect magnesium deficits in clinical situations and magnesium load tests are used as a more accurate method to identify magnesium deficiency in a variety of disease states as well as in subclinical conditions. In this study, Mg load tests were performed on patients with overt signs of disease and controls using three different Mg solution infusions- a Mg-EDTA-nutrient cocktail used in EDTA chelation therapy, the same cocktail without EDTA and Mg sulfate in saline. The high magnesium retention observed in a previous study using a chelation therapy cocktail was not due simply to the type of infusion solution employed since mean magnesium retention was greater than 50% for all three solutions in control subjects and in subjects with overt signs of disease. In this study, there was more Mg retained when EDTA was omitted from the chelation cocktail and subjects with overt disease retained more magnesium than healthy controls. Magnesium deficiency may be widespread and the relationship of Mg deficiency to related diseases requires further study.