Plants take bite out of deadly snake venoms
By Janet Raloff
From New Orleans, at a meeting of the Society of Toxicology
In many warm parts of the world where agriculture remains largely nonmechanized, farmers face the deadly risk of snakebites as they tend their fields. Therapeutic antivenins can be costly—and they require refrigeration, which isn’t reliably available in the developing world. A Nigerian pharmacologist has found in local plants a potentially cheap and easy-to-store antidote to all these problems.
Isaac U. Asuzu of the University of Nigeria Nsukka in Enugu and his colleagues consulted native healers about plant concoctions they prescribed for snakebites. The scientists then ran extracts from the plants through test-tube assays for activity against venoms of the Nigerian spitting cobra (Naja naja nigricollis), puff adder (Bitis arietans), and saw-scaled viper (Echis ocellatus).