Update: Please see the replies below on the disastrous Deferiprone trial.
Berberine Is a Promising Alkaloid to Attenuate Iron Toxicity Efficiently in Iron-Overloaded Mice 2022 journals.sagepub.com/doi/fu...
"The results of this study show that the natural compound berberine demonstrates a superior ability to reduce excess iron and chelate it in tissues, including liver, kidney and lung. By reducing oxidative stress, it can also improve the activity of the antioxidant enzymes catalase and superoxide dismutase. This remarkable ability of berberine is comparable to and often superior to that of deferoxamine as a common chelator. Berberine was equally capable of reducing malondialdehyde and lipid peroxidation resulting from an iron overdose. Therefore, we recommend further in vivo studies on berberine as an iron chelator and an antioxidant compound in diseases associated with iron-overload."
Is Chelation Therapy a Potential Treatment for Parkinson’s Disease? 2021 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
"In recent clinical trials, iron chelation therapy has been shown to open the way to a treatment of Parkinson’s disease, PD, which potentially slows the disease progression. Many of these neurological disorders, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, appear to be related to focal accumulation of iron in specific regions of the brain."
"Concluding Remarks: The underlying characteristics of Parkinson’s disease include neuroinflammation, the generation of ROS, and localised iron accumulation, particularly in the SN. The combined effects of inflammation on iron metabolism in glial cells and their toxic consequences on neurons suggest that therapeutic approaches that target the regulation of glial function may represent a promising approach to the treatment of iron-mediated neurodegenerative diseases, such as PD. Neuroinflammation would stimulate the classic iron-withholding response seen in the anaemia of chronic disease, which is reflected in the poor response to iron chelation therapy observed in our clinical trial [109] among PD patients with inflammation. This would also be in agreement with the observation that the long-term utilisation of non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs protects from PD. Thus, a combined approach involving multi-target drugs, combining iron chelation, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties may represent the way forward."