Cream may buy time for snake bite victims

Jun 27 (Reuters) - A chemical compound that is used on heart patients may raise chances of survival for snakebite victims, Australian scientists said on Monday.

In a paper published in Nature Medicine, the researchers said the chemical nitric oxide can slow down by as much as 50 percent the time it takes for snake venom to enter the bloodstream.

With that extra time, victims can seek medical help, said lead author Dirk van Helden, professor at the School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Newcastle in Australia.

"When you are bitten by a snake, the toxins are large molecules and they get injected into tissues. They can't break into blood vessels because they are too big. So they get taken up by the lymphatic system and it takes them into the blood vessels," Helden said in a telephone interview.

"The idea is to close off the lymph flow ... and we tried it and it markedly slowed lymph flow in rats and also in humans."

In their experiment, Helden and colleagues rubbed an ointment containing nitric oxide around the spot where mice were injected with lethal doses of snake venom and found that it slowed lymph flow significantly.

"(They) lived for an hour on average (without ointment), but when we put the cream on, (another group of mice) lived for 90 minutes. If you can slow the lymph, it has a massive effect on survival," he said.

The ointment had the same effect on human volunteers, although in this case, the participants were injected with a harmless dye which had molecules of roughly the same size as snake venom.

Helden said nitric oxide had the effect of slowing down the pumping action of the lymphatic system, which in turn slowed down the transportation of the venom into the bloodstream.

Each year, snakebite accounts for an estimated 100,000 deaths and 400,000 amputations worldwide, mostly in South Asia, southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa because antivenom is not readily available.

Australia is home to some of the world's most venomous snakes.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/...7HM0P420110626

Old News :P http://ball-pythons.net/forums/showt...-by-half-study ..... but still Awesome...:gj:

If they really can put it in ointment form cream that will be must have in every survival/car/home first aid kit :gj::gj::gj:

This is pretty amazing, I would love to see something like this on the shelves of our supermarkets or even our Sporting/ Outdoors stores.

Thank you very much for sharing (I was a Pre-med geek for a while so this is very interesting for me :P) even if it is old news ;)

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Originally Posted by EchoPyrex

This is pretty amazing, I would love to see something like this on the shelves of our supermarkets or even our Sporting/ Outdoors stores.

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The only drawback I have read about this is that it only works on Australian species.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...ment_buys_time

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ER12

The only drawback I have read about this is that it only works on Australian species.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/gene...ment_buys_time

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I wonder why this is and thanks for the article, time to go read it :)

EDIT: This article is very informational, thank you for posting it.

in addition to the points mentioned in the article I would think that bites from animals with longer fangs i.e. vipers, pitvipers.this cream would not be very useful due to the fact that the venom is not typically delivered to the lymph system. I also would think that slowing down the spread of venom although may potentially save someone’s life may very well cost them a limb due to more time for the venom to cause necrosis. maybe not a big concern for allot of Ozzy hots, but for some like the red bellied black a real point of concern.