Reptile & Amphibian Forums

KIII (Corpus Christi, Texas) 10 October 07 Kingsville Snake Research Will Save Lives (Michael Gibson)
Dr. Elda Sanchez has been working under a grant to find another anti-venom for coral snake bites in the U.S. She's been doing that work at the Natural Toxins Research Center at A&M Kingsville.
The reason why another anti-venom needs to be found is because next year the only manufacturer of the drug here in the U.S. will halt production. That's bad news for folks in the Coastal Bend because the snakes are found everywhere here.
But now, Sanchez says she's found a substitute anti-dote in Mexico. That drug was used to treat a different species of coral snakes in that country. What no one knew until now was whether it would treat the bite of a Texas Coral snake. Sanchez says it will do that.
Now, it's up to the U.S. Government to approve the use of the Mexican anti-venom.
Kingsville Snake Research Will Save Lives

I see 2 errors with that article. For one, Wyeth is no longer producing antivenin. Number two, you have to be a complete idiot to get bitten by a coral snake!
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Tim Cole
www.Designeratrox.com/
www.AustinReptileService.net
www.AustinReptileExpo.com/
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Conservation through Education

Wyeths website still show that they manufacture both antivenins. crotalid and micrurus.

Randal

I am aware of that. On another list serve they were contacted about this and they did admit they stopped producing a couple years ago. It was also mentioned at the Venom Conference in Tucson last month which I attended.
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Tim Cole
www.Designeratrox.com/
www.AustinReptileService.net
www.AustinReptileExpo.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<
Conservation through Education

I read that Tiger snake antivenin works for Coral snake envenomation, which I find very interesting. Make no mistake, Corals can be feisty and very willing to bite. These little snakes are more potent than most people think. I think it’s common knowledge most people are bitten while doing yard work like scooping up leaves and decaying brush piles, or flat out picking the thing up. In that case, it’s usually children who are attracted to them. Or a grown up like me...

I had not heard that tiger snake serum would work. That's interesting, but it's not approved by the FDA either and isn't it MANY times more expensive than the Mexican coral snake antivenom (which I would assume would be at least as effective, probably more)?
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What goes up must come down...unless it exceeds escape velocity.

Tim is right about Wyeth stopping production. Larry is also correct that the Bioclon coralsnake antivenom works . I can not find any peer reviewed papers saying that tiger snake antivenom works on corals. Also the Costa Rica antivenom has been shown to work.

Jim Harrison

I believe the original reference to the purported “broad spectrum” efficacy of Tiger Snake antivenin against a host of elapid species dates from a mid-1960s paper published in Toxicon. Unfortunately, I don’t have the citation at hand, but it was taken so seriously by the US Army Medical Corps that they were considering purchasing the (Australian) Commonwealth Serum Labs product for use as a sort of “polyvalent” treatment for elapid bites in Viet Nam.

In fact, this paper resulted in the derailment of a proposal made by my old boss (MAJ/DR Herschel Flowers) that would have re-opened an old French antivenin facility located at Nha Trang. I don’t think a contract was ever entered into, however, because the State Department’s bean-counters didn’t feel that snakebite was a significant medical problem for American troops. And, in retrospect, I tend to agree with them, although there were surely more GIs bitten by the various elapids in Viet Nam than there are Americans bitten by coral snakes in any given year.

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Tom Lott
Thornscrub

Funny, I would think the yield being higher in Tiger snake would make production of the anti much cheaper than a Coral snake production, and as far as FDA Approvals, that seems ridiculous for snake bite, what’s the alternative treatment?
This article does say this was done on mice, not humans. You can look it up on accessmylibrary.com. Here’s some info on finding the article.

Australian tiger snake (Notechis scutatus) and Mexican coral snake (Micruris species) antivenoms prevent death from United States coral snake (Micrurus fulvius fulvius) venom in a mouse model.
Publication: Journal of Toxicology: Clinical Toxicology
Publication Date: 01/01/2003
Author: Wisniewski, Michael S. ; Hill, Robert E. ; Havey, Joshua M. ; Bogdan, Gregory M. ; Dart, Richard C.

>>Funny, I would think the yield being higher in Tiger snake would make production of the anti much cheaper than a Coral snake production,

But that has very little to do with sale price of a medical product. I'm guessing the problem is that Australia (like the US) has powerful medical and legal lobbies and infinite regulations that make it so expensive to produce medicines and get them approved that A) the overhead is huge and B) only the largest companies can do it and so they have no competition and can set the price.

Not that I'm saying we should have a Mexican-style system but maybe there's something we can learn from them.

>>and as far as FDA Approvals, that seems ridiculous for snake bite, what’s the alternative treatment?

The issue is that FDA approval requires clinical trials and it's hard to get people to volunteer to be bitten by venomous snakes. Some type of exception or alternate path for things like this seems like it would make sense, but see above...
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What goes up must come down...unless it exceeds escape velocity.

The only documented off island species that Notechis A/V works on is King Cobra (Ophiophagus)and Bungarus candidus. According to Dr. Minton & Dr. Warrell

Cheers!

Al
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Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

One thing to keep in mind is the batch to batch variability of CSL 'monovalents'. Some are true monovalents, others are polyvalents that weren't quite up to scratch for all species but were fine for a particular species and that lable was put on. There is also a tiger/brown bivalent that is labled one or the other as needed. Further, the horses are rotated around so they could have any combination of antigens in there.

SO take any past results with a healthy grain of salt. Plus, there have been zero clinical tests on the efficacy against overseas venoms. Lab results are nice but only a suggestion, not an answer.

One thing I've long wondered is why Australia even bothers with monovalents. The polyvalent is so bloody good anyway.

Cheers
Bryan
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Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry
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Department of Biochemistry,
Bio21 Institute,
University of Melbourne
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http://www.venomdoc.com

Hi Bryan:

Yes, now I remember this discussion with you about the CW Labs serum. Would you say it a reasonable approach to stock their Polyvalent if you keep mostly PNG elapids (Deathies, Taipan, King Brown,& Common Brown?

Cheers!

Al
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Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

Yep. You'd want few vials through particularly since you have taipans. 6 should be enough for a major envenomation.

Cheers
B

>>Hi Bryan:
>>
>>Yes, now I remember this discussion with you about the CW Labs serum. Would you say it a reasonable approach to stock their Polyvalent if you keep mostly PNG elapids (Deathies, Taipan, King Brown,& Common Brown?
>>
>>Cheers!
>>
>>Al
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>>Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
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Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Department of Biochemistry,
Bio21 Institute,
University of Melbourne
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
http://www.venomdoc.com

The biggest problem is there ARE complete idiots out there.