BRYAN - COLLEGE STATION EAGLE (Bryan, Texas) 15 January 06 Storms, urban sprawl mean more snakebites (Rose French)
Brentwood, Tenn (AP): East Texan Jodie Richey was trying to escape Hurricane Rita when her 3-year-old daughter was bitten by a rattlesnake in the family's yard.
The girl nearly died from the venom, which caused her leg to swell and turn black.
"It happened so quickly. As tiny as she is ... I was so scared," said Richey, who lives in Onalaska, near Lake Livingston.
Her daughter was saved by CroFab, a snake antivenin made by Protherics PLC, a British drug company that has become the main snakebite antidote manufacturer in the U.S.
Federal officials turned to Protherics for antivenin to treat the increase in snakebites that followed Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, when rain and floodwaters drove cottonmouths, copperheads and rattlesnakes from their natural habitats.
Protherics, whose U.S. headquarters are located in suburban Nashville, also has seen an increase in demand for CroFab as more people in fast-growing suburbs cross paths with snakes.
"To this point, we've been able to continue to meet a rising demand," Protherics U.S. President Saul Komisar said. "Every year, more is required, and we're planning for it. We're planning to make more for next year."
Shortly after Katrina hit, Food and Drug Administration and other federal officials contacted Protherics to see if adequate supplies of its snake antivenin could be sent to the Gulf Coast.
"We anticipated that hundreds of people could be affected," said Jonathan Goldsmith, deputy director in the office of blood research and review for the FDA. "We wanted to prepare for what we thought would be the worst-case scenario."
Tom Arnold, medical director of the Louisiana Poison Control Center in Shreveport, said the worst-case scenario didn't happen, but there were dozens more snakebites than usual.
"It's historically true that after any big storms come through, we always see more bites because of snakes being displaced, people going back in the clean-up phases and coming into contact with the snakes," Arnold said.
The number of bites by poisonous pit viper snakes - a category that includes rattlesnakes, copperheads and cottonmouths - has increased as the growth of the suburbs has collided with the snakes' habitats, said Richard Dart, director of the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug center in Denver.
"It's definitely true suburban areas are at greatest risk of snakebites," Dart said.
There were nearly 2,900 reports of pit viper bites in 2004 - up by about 100 incidents over 2003, Dart said. That's a large increase over 2002 when there were about 2,230 bites, and Dart estimates thousands of bites go unreported each year.
About a half-dozen people on average die from snakebites annually.
Ray Latham was installing cabinets in a home under construction northeast of Los Angeles last spring when he found a Mojave Green rattlesnake in the street.
"I've never really been afraid of snakes," Latham said. "I was going to shoo it into the bushes, so I took a stick to pick it up and move it. When I lifted the stick, it bit my hand."
Latham nearly died and was treated with CroFab at the Loma Linda University hospital.
Sean Bush, a Loma Linda doctor and snakebite specialist who's a cast member of Venom ER on TV's Animal Planet channel, said suburban sprawl is a major reason why Southern California is a snakebite hotspot.
Florida, Arizona and Texas also see high numbers of venomous bites, he said.
Dart said 95 percent of the antivenin used in the U.S. in 2004 was CroFab, which became available on the commercial market in 2001 after Protherics won FDA approval to sell the drug.
Another antivenin made by Wyeth Pharmaceuticals - which accounted for the remaining 5 percent of antivenin used in 2004 - began to be sold in the 1950s though the company since has backed off on its production.
That news several years ago led to shortages of snake antivenin because Protherics officials weren't prepared to supply the entire market.
Dart said there now are no such shortages of CroFab, which is made from the blood of Australian-raised sheep. CroFab generally is considered more effective than Wyeth's horse-based product, which can cause violent allergic reactions, he said.
CroFab's popularity has led to steady growth in sales, which were up 9 percent to $18.1 million for the six months that ended Sept. 30, 2005.
Storms, urban sprawl mean more snakebites