New drug slows venom's effects

A new ointment is proving to save lives by slowing the work that the venom does inside increasing survival rates by 50 percent in Australia.

In experiments on humans and mice, researchers in Australia showed that a class of compounds called nitric oxide donors delays the entry of toxins from potentially deadly snakebites into the blood stream. Nitric oxide (NO), a molecule involved in regulation of blood pressure and the control of brain activity, has been shown to lower blood pressure in patients who suffer acute strokes. The new finding is of more than academic interest: every year some 100,000 people worldwide die from snakebites, and another 400,000 must amputate limbs that have been injected with poison. It has long been known that many snake venoms contain large molecules that transit the human body's lymphatic system before entering the bloodstream. Separately, scientists have also established that nitric oxide slows down a pumping mechanism within the lymphatic system, a part of the body's immune system that carries a clear fluid -- called lymph -- toward the heart.

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