The potentiality of vanadium in medicinal applications

Light is thrown on the impact of vanadium compounds in medicinal issues, including simple inorganic vanadates, such as vanadates stabilized (and thus possibly modified) by organic counter-ions. The main fields of potential medications (and limits thereof) based on vanadium so far do not (yet) enjoy official pharmacological application. However, several sectors of the potentially successful treatment of pathological symptoms with vanadium (coordination) compounds have been thoroughly and mostly successfully investigated during the past two or three decades. The main issues dealt with in the present overview are directed towards (type 2) diabetes, anti-tumour therapy, and the implication of vanadium compounds in (tropical) diseases caused by bacteria, viruses, flagellates or amoeba, such as tuberculosis, sleeping sickness and Chagas disease, leishmaniasis and amoebiasis. The investigations directed towards medicinal applications of vanadium compounds have commonly been carried out, in vitro and in vivo, with experimental animals. Most promising perhaps in the field of potential applications of vanadium-based medications is the antidiabetic effect of rather simple coordination compounds such as VO(maltol)(2), a complex that has been checked in clinical tests I and II.