Posted on 02/21/2024 11:53:00 AM PST by Red Badger
Researchers have discovered a potent antibody that can neutralize a key type of neurotoxin produced by four different deadly snake species from South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa—a step toward an antivenom that could be used on any of the 200 or so dangerous venomous snakes throughout the world.
“We are wiping out a major subclass of neurotoxins here,” says Nicholas Casewell, a toxinologist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and co-author on a paper describing the antibody published today in Science Translational Medicine. “I think this is a really huge step in terms of what can be achieved by a single antibody.”
Snake venoms are a mix of dozens or even hundreds of compounds that target nerve cells, blood clotting, or tissues, killing an estimated 81,000 to 138,000 people around the globe annually and disabling hundreds of thousands more. The standard treatment is antivenoms, a cocktail of antibodies harvested from horses or sheep injected with nonlethal doses of the venom. Although these drugs save lives, “antivenoms suffer from numerous problems,” says Kartik Sunagar, head of the evolutionary venomics lab at the Indian Institute of Science and a lead author on the paper. For one thing, snake venoms vary a lot between species, meaning treatment depends on which species has bitten you—which is not always known. Venoms can vary even within species; Sunagar’s research group discovered that an antivenom used after the bite of the monocellate cobra (Naja kaouthia) is almost completely ineffective in some regions in India.
Many antivenoms are made to work against several snakes from the same region, which means they’re relatively weak against one another. One such cocktail widely used in Africa fails to save roughly one in seven people bitten by the black mamba (Dendroaspis polylepis), for example. People have died despite receiving dozens...
(Excerpt) Read more at science.org ...
Don’t matter.
Doc says yer gonna die.
Sorry, but that must appear in every FR posting about venomous snakes...
23 seconds. I vow revenge.
Well, OK, a minute 23. I’m getting old and slow.
Will it cover a bite from Ilhan Omar?
😜🤦♂️...............................
But we can’t find a vaccine to protect against lyme disease.
🤦♀️................................
And . . . it’s safe and effective.
Great. Now I can get that Gaboon Viper I’ve had my eye on.
That one never gets old.
Any volunteers for the test study???
Didn’t think so.
That poor guy in Colorado and his Gila Monster.................
Is it gonna work with a Mohave green bite?
Is it a snake from Asia or Africa?.....................
Southwest US. Rattlesnake species.
Then Doc says you gonna die.....................
What is the cure for a snake bite from a snake that’s inside your tent, like Mike Pence ?
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