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Venom longativity and anti-venom
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by Rabies on April 2, 2002
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Hi,where most spider venom and wasp/bee venom etc work for a short period of time before it wears off.I was woundering if snake venom also looses its potency over a period of time after its been injected into its prey/predator?
Anti-venom how does this roughly work?I mean lets take neurotoxins that attack post cynaptic receptors,does the AV bind with the PC receptors preventing neuro toxins from binding but allow Acetylcholine to pass through.Or does AV bild anti bodies that attack and destroy the toxins.Or does it do both?I'm waiting for my book,"by Findlay E Russel" to arrive from the USA which I hope will help answer some of my questions on this topic which I'm trying to teach myself.
Thankyou for your time
John
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RE: Venom longativity and anti-venom
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by Naja_oxiana on April 2, 2002
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Hi John,
If venom is freeze dried then it has quite a long shelf life, but in wet form, it can lose toxicity with temperature variations, and probably time. I'm not sure what the life of lyophilized venom is.
Post-synaptic neuro toxins--the more common of the bunch--do not bind with any part of the synaptic membrane. This allows them to take effect quicker but also means that antivenom has a much longer window for administration. Pre-synaptic neuros, on the other hand, do physically bind themselves to the membrane to prevent the releace of ACe. Once these neuros have bound themselves to the membrane, antivenom is pretty much useless and you must wait for the effects of the venom to wear off--which will likely happen given adequate life support and a number of other favourable factors.
How does antivenom work? It is the serum of hyper-immunized horses or sheep. The horses or sheep are bled and the blood cells are removed from the serum which this contains massive numbers of anti-bodies which fight the foreign proteins. It should be noted that you do not retain any benefits of immunity from receiving antivenom, and can actually become hypersensetized to it.
Dr Russell's book is good, but you might want to get an immunology text to really understand this process. I have a couple very good Immunology texts from Amazon.com
Cheers
Roger
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