Chicken egg yolk rich source of venom antidote.
CHICKEN eggs may turn out to be an efficient tool to produce antidote for snakebites, a recent study has found.Currently, horses are used to produce the antidote. Horses are injected with a sub- lethal dose of venom, following which the animals develop protective proteins called antibodies to fight the poison. Blood is collected from the horse and these antibodies purified to produce the antidote. The process is painful for the horse and expensive. The product also has many side effects for humans.
A team of scientists from the Chennaibased King Institute of Preventive Medicine ( under the World Health Organization) and Mediclone Research Centre have found that the antidote from chicken eggs is equivalent to that obtained from horses in studies carried out in mice and guinea pigs. What's more, the antidote is safe as well. The researchers published their findings in Current Science . The procedure involves injecting hens with a non- lethal dose of cobra venom.
After they laid eggs, the yolk was purified and antibodies extracted from them. Mice were then injected with a lethal dose of snake venom and given a specific dose of antibodies. " The use of chickens for antibody production represents replacement, refinement and reduction in the use of large animals," the scientists said.
" Twenty- two chickens can produce as much protective antibodies as a horse can yield per year," they added. Thus, instead of collecting a large volume of blood from a large animal, antibodies could be extracted from egg yolk in future.
The antidote obtained from eggs also reduced the incidence of anaphylactic shock and sickness -- side effects associated with the product obtained from horses. Anaphylactic shock is associated with dizziness, loss of consciousness, laboured breathing, swelling of the tongue and breathing tubes, blueness of the skin, low blood pressure, heart failure, and death.
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| Publication: | Mail Today (New Delhi, India) |
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| Date: | Jan 25, 2010 |
| Words: | 317 |
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