After antivenom is administered, symptoms of mambasnake acidosis may worsen in patients. Scientists can finally find out why.
The complex interaction of toxins and anti-toxicity within the body reveals hidden neurological symptoms from specific toxins in the venom. These masked symptoms manifest when the effects of other, equally dangerous toxins are neutralized.
You might like it
There are four species of mamba snakes belonging to the genus Dendroaspis. Mamba bites are considered one of the deadliest snakes in the world, as they are a critical medical emergency in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in Black Mamba, and chewing is 100% deadly unless treated immediately.
Without rapid intervention, the neurotoxin of Mamba venom can cause deaths due to respiratory paralysis and cardiac arrest within an hour, which could contribute to the deaths of more than 30,000 snake das in the area each year.
Mamba toxins attack the nervous system primarily by “hacking” neuroreceptors on muscles, co-author Brian Fry, a molecular biologist at the University of Queensland, told Live Science. This blocks nerve signals from the brain from reaching the muscles.
“Unless you try to do something like a walk or breathing, you’re probably not even aware that it’s going on,” Frye said. This effect is characterized by the inability of the muscle to contract – known as limp or flaccid paralysis, and existing anti-toxicity works well against symptoms. This form of paralysis is caused by the poison of three of the four mamba species, the West Green, Jameson’s Mamba and the Black Mamba.
However, there is a second way that Mamba Venoms can work. This has the opposite effect. It overloads nerve signals in the muscles, causing uncontrollable spasms. This is called rigid or spastic paralysis. “It’s not that the diaphragm is completely limp and can’t breathe, [now the patient] Their diaphragm is completely constricted and they can’t breathe,” Fry said.
Historically, scientists believed that the neurotoxin behind rigidity paralysis exists only in four species, East Green Mamba poison. The other three mamba venom was thought to cause only limp paralysis. “That’s what I didn’t know [rigid paralysis] It’s always happened in the background, like any other species,” Frye said.
Fry and colleagues tested how four mamba venom attack the nervous system, and how three commercially available antivenoms in Africa suppress these effects. They were able to perform these tests using neuromuscular tissues from the laboratory and stimulate the muscles chemically or electrically. The introduction of East Green Mamba Poison caused tissue spasms, but the other Mamba Poisons did not cause any visible responses. That is, until you try to stimulate the muscle and don’t respond to prevent the muscle from contracting.
You might like it
Three antitoxins successfully handled the paralytic effect of wobbling in all mamba species, allowing the muscles to contract again. However, at that time, in some cases, rigid paralysis was set up, indicating that anti-toxicity was less effective against it. In people bitten by mamba, “spasmodic paralysis can be fatal, but flaccid paralysis is more dangerous because it has a stronger effect than usual,” Frey noted.
Researchers also noted that the black mamba venom can be killed with just two drops of poison – has changed between snakes from Kenya and South Africa. The poison differed in both how the tissue affected and reacted to anti-toxicity.
“No matter where the species comes from, you need knowledge of the variation in geographical toxins to design antibodies that contain antibodies to all medically relevant toxins from a species,” Andreas Hougaard Lausthsen Kiel, a biotechnology scholar at the Denmark Institute of Technology who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email. “The importance of this study is that it shows that antivenom needs to be optimized to neutralize both toxin types in order to be effective.”
Fry Next wants to have a more comprehensive and broad view of Black Mamba.
“We want to map more accurately which anti-vivenom performs better in a particular region,” he said.
This article is for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide medical advice.
Source link
