Evaluation of the Genetic Changes and the Incidence of Different Diseases in the Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Individuals Exposed to Arsenic

Metals are perhaps one of the earliest medicines and poisons known to human being. Arsenic has been found in nature since antiquity. Dioscorides, a Greek physician in the court of the Roman Emperor Nero, described arsenic as a poison in the first century. Since those days arsenic has been used as a deadly poison and has been implicated in several historical homicidal cases. The toxic metalloid characterized by its tasteless and odorless properties made it an ideal poison and was in vogue in the Middle Ages. Indeed arsenic has a murderous history, yet its potential therapeutic was enhanced in 1910, when Nobel laureate Paul Ehrlich developed salvarsan, an organic arsenical for treating syphilis and trypanosomiasis. Organic arsenicals were the first pharmaceutical antibiotics and were used for the first half of the twentieth century until supplanted by penicillin and other more effective and less toxic agents