Vanadium in health issues

Abstract

Vanadium (20th in natural abundance) is omnipresent in the environment both naturally and in problematic or toxic concentrations, as pollutant. Ingested, e.g. with drinking water and food, or by inhalation in the form of oxides attached to dust particle, vanadium can cause health hazards. Since vanadate is a phosphate antagonist, vanadium—in appropriate low concentrations—is also expected to exert a variety of physiological actions, some of which have been documented in pre-medicinal or—in the case of diabetes type 2—in phase IIa clinical tests. Other potential implementations, elucidated and scrutinized in this report, include myocardial infarctions, viral, bacterial and parasitic infections (the latter essentially in tropical countries), and cancer.