A commonly used blood-thinning drug can be used as an antidote to cobra venom, an international study has found. Queensland Experts called it “really exciting.”
In a study published in the journal Science Translational Medicine on Thursday, Professor Nicholas Casewell described snakebite as “one of the most deadly neglected tropical diseases, with its burden falling overwhelmingly on rural areas of low- and middle-income countries.”
Cobra bites are usually treated Because intravenous antivenom delivers the drug to the bloodstream rather than tissue, antivenom treatment is ineffective at treating necrosis (the irreversible death of body tissue that can lead to amputation or loss of limb function). Treatment is also expensive, and it can take days for patients to reach a hospital.
Tian Du, lead author of the study from the University of Sydney, said that if human trials were successful, heparin, a blood-clotting inhibitor that acts directly on infected tissue, could be used in the field, possibly in combination with other drugs.
Du said the success of heparin, which is designated an essential medicine by the World Health Organization, could become widely available relatively quickly as a cheap, safe and effective drug for treating cobra bites.
It’s unclear at this stage how much heparin can reduce tissue damage, but the hope is that it could reduce damage by 50 to 100 percent, depending on the dose and how quickly the drug is administered, she said.
The WHO has recognised snakebite as a priority among neglected tropical diseases and has announced a goal to halve the number of deaths and disabilities caused by snakebites by 2030. The number of people bitten by cobras is unknown, but the majority are from the cobra species. Snakebite incidents in some parts of India And Africa.
The team analyzed which genes snake venom targets and identified that these genes are involved in the production of heparan sulfate on cell surfaces and heparin sulfate, which is released during immune responses. Heparin acts as a decoy antidote that binds to and neutralizes toxins in venom, causing tissue damage.
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Using the same method, the researchers Box jellyfish venom antidote of 2019and is conducting research to find a similar antidote for the bites of the Australian black snake and the Australian bottlenose snake.
Associate Professor Brian Fry, a venom expert at the University of Queensland who was not involved in the research, said the study was “really exciting”.
“Cobra venom causes severe damage to local tissue, almost as if you were injecting acid,” he said. “This is the first study of this particular toxin class and how it works.”
