BANGOR – The medical team attending to the seven poisoning victims at Eastern Maine Medical Center is preparing to try an experimental drug in an effort to remove the arsenic from the patients’ bodies.

Heidi Smith, a clinical pharmacist at the hospital, said at a press conference Friday that she had been consulting with the country’s leading toxicologists and that doctors at EMMC were preparing to administer an “investigative drug” called dimercaptopropane sulfonate to at least some of the patients there.

The drug is supposed to serve as “binder” that basically sticks to the arsenic so that it can be excreted through urination, she said.

Several relatives of the poison victims attended the press conference, held at the hospital late Friday morning. They stood quietly at the back of the room and through a spokesperson asked for their privacy.

Two Maine State Police detectives also attended the press conference, but they did not address the media.

Because the case has been labeled a homicide and no one has yet been arrested, the hospital is providing extra security for the patients and their families at the hospital, Dr. Erik Steele, vice president of patient care services, told the media.

There was little indication Friday that doctors were seeing much medical improvement in the seven patients at EMMC. Three of them remain in critical condition, and four are in serious condition.

While all of the victims are still extremely ill, the staff is hopeful they will recover, Steele said.

The long-term effects the poisoning might have on their bodies, however, is unknown, Steele said.

“Arsenic poisoning is complex and has a wide variety of symptoms,” Steele said, “and there is little experience anywhere in the country with such high levels of arsenic.

“There are very few arsenic poisonings in the country each year. To have 15 acute poisonings at one time is extraordinary.”

Eight other patients remain hospitalized at Cary Medical Center in Caribou. Doctors at both hospitals are in close contact as treatment continues, Steele said.

Noted toxicologist Dr. Anthony J. Tomassoni, director of the Northern New England Poison Center at Maine Medical Center in Portland and medical director of the Office of Public Health and Emergency Preparedness for the Maine Department of Human Services, Bureau of Health, was consulting Friday with physicians at Cary caring for the patients who were poisoned.

Tomassoni presented a formal briefing to medical staff members and met with patients, according to a hospital release.

Steele said those who wanted to help in some way should pray for the victims and their families and consider donating blood or blood platelets because both probably would be needed by some of the patients as their treatment continues.

Whole blood or platelets can be donated at EMMC’s Donor Center on Union Street in Bangor, and whole blood also can be donated at the American Red Cross, he said. Neither facility is open over the weekend.

Steele called the cooperation among the multitude of agencies and facilities that have been dealing with the poisoning “extraordinary.”

The event is the first of its kind at the hospital or just about anywhere else in the country and has sent teams of doctors scrambling for the “little research” that’s available on acute arsenic poisoning.

Doctors have been dealing with toxicologists, the Northern New England Poison Control Center and the Bureau of Health, as well as with other poison specialists throughout the country.

Arsenic is a heavy metal poison that redistributes itself to various parts of the body. Along with several hospital personnel and family physicians, the patients also are being treated by pulmonary and kidney specialists.

Arsenic poisoning can cause the lungs to become irritated and inflamed, and patients may need help breathing, staff said. It also can cause irregular heart rhythms and kidney failure.

Patients have been treated for massive amounts of fluid loss and low blood pressure.

The Rev. Elaine Hewes of the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Bangor has been providing support and counseling to the families of the victims. She read a brief statement from them on Friday.

The families thanked the medical staff at Cary and at EMMC, as well as all the people who have sent messages from “near and far.”

They said they “remain hopeful in the face of tragedy.”