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Black mamba venom is 'better painkiller' than morphine (2012)
- h2odragon 5y agoI would much rather tend a field of poppies than a mamba snake ranch. Poppies hardly ever run away from thunderstorms.
- GravitasFailure 5y agoOn one side, this is an incredible medical advancement and opens the door to a lot of other developments, but on the other side if my doctor said I was getting injected with snake venom...
- krisoft 5y agoYour doctor wouldn’t say that. Your doctor would prescribe you polylepiscin or some other vaguelly medical and scientifical sounding name. You wouldn’t know that the compound originally was found in black mamba venom unless you like geeking out on medicine history. (And if you like geeking out on that you would already know that nearly all drugs comes from weird things.)
- rich_sasha 5y agoYes exactly. Bacteria in probiotic yoghurt come in from the guts... no one says “fancy like eating your own shit”?
- GravitasFailure 5y agoThank you for reminding me that fecal transplants are a thing and have shown real world benefits. The one time a suppository is preferable to oral administration.
- laumars 5y agoIn fairness, the U.K. adverts for probiotic yoghurts have said it contains natural bacteria found in the gut.
- GravitasFailure 5y agoI do enjoy geeking out over medical things in general and would trust that an approved pain killer would not be straight up venom and will happily take it, especially if it lives up to the hype. I'm still going to give any doctor that prescribes it to me just a little bit of grief, though.
- robbiep 5y agoWait till you find what we use salmon sperm for
- jes 5y agoI’ll see your salmon sperm and raise you one penis facial[1], as recommended by Sandra Bullock and Cate Blanchett. Few people seem to care that the source of the active ingredient in the penis facial is obtained through the egregious action of cutting healthy, valuable tissue off of male Korean infants who have no diagnosis of defect or disease. [1] https://nypost.com/2018/03/15/the-penis-facial-is-the-latest-disturbing-beauty-treatment https://nypost.com/2018/03/15/the-penis-facial-is-the-latest...
- elliekelly 5y agoLike Botox. The doctor doesn’t mention they’re injecting you with botulism (or maybe the toxin that causes botulism?) but they are.
- Turing_Machine 5y agoThe very common ACE inhibitor medications for high blood pressure (lisinopril and the others that end in -pril) are synthetic analogs of a compound found in the South American pit viper Bothrops jararaca. Scientists noted that being bitten by one of these snakes produces a rapid and profound drop in blood pressure. In the wild, of course, this causes the snake's natural prey animals to pass out so they can be eaten. So it's not like snake venom-related drugs are unprecedented.
- jack_riminton 5y agoAny experts on here know whether it'd be possible to create a synthetic version? It would've expected that issue to be mentioned in the article tbh
- h2odragon 5y agoI could spray paint a garter snake for ya, would that do? (sorry) Venoms are often a bitch because they're not stable, I think. manufactured at point of use for a good reason.
- jack_riminton 5y agoThat's interesting thanks, I suppose that's why we've not heard anything about this discovery since
- awelxtr 5y ago9y have passed, no new developments about this?
- mikepurvis 5y agoIndeed. A quick search reveals nothing more than the original paper from 2012, cited just one time: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.11526 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.11526
- cultofmetatron 5y agoprobably because mamba venom is crazy expensive.
- mmazing 5y agoFor as many times as the article stated they are "surprised" and "completely baffled", maybe they still are.
- high_byte 5y ago>The researchers looked at venom from 50 species before they found the black mamba's pain-killing proteins - called mambalgins
- stephencanon 5y agoCan’t feel pain if you’re dead.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eth0up 5y agoI really hope this goes somewhere. I've been left on the curbside with a caduceus up my backside because of self-righteousness, paranoia and hysterics. If an analgesic can be created without committing the atrocity of inadvertently imparting a synthetic sense of wellbeing too, much suffering would end. Just don't poison it with acetaminophen! Maybe I'll abandon my unfruitful hunt for opium lettuce and raise snakes instead.
- eth0up 5y agoTo those who through inhibition of self expression see all subjects as an arrow facing north or south, I pose a question for you to silently grate your arrows edge upon: Is it for the greater good that pain be palliated with the chronic use of ibuprofen and perforated ulcers, or acetaminophen and failing livers, or any nsaid and heart disease? Is insomnia now in fashion? Is lethargy and unproductivity encouraged? Or is it all a simple lack of empathy, characteristic of pampered narcissists who've acclimated to comfort since birth? Or maybe an illustrious form of asceticism, an exhibition of impervious strength and endurance?
- NikolaNovak 5y agoFwiw - I enjoyed your posts The way I enjoy poetry : lovely, but largely incomprehensible. I don't know if you're getting down voted due to people disagreeing or merely not understanding what your point and data is. It is possible if you contributed more clearly you'd find a more receptive audience. I find frequently when there is topic near to people's heart aNd they spend a lot of time thinking about, they start at a hundred with a very strong and flowery language. My suggestion would be to understand others don't have same context and start at 1 and build your way up, whether logically or emotionally. You Gotta ask yourself are you writing for your own sake and enjoy your metaphors and alusions and poetry without regard for others (even finding gratification and martyrdom in not being understood), or are you actually trying to educate, persuade, build understanding. If the latter, focus on that goal most clearly and directly. (I could be wrong - merely my 2 cents).
- eth0up 5y ago
- Someone 5y agoFTA: They admit to being completely baffled about why the mamba would produce it. I would guess it keeps their target calm. A panicking prey is more likely to injure the snake than one that dies before it realizes it got seriously bitten.
- _hilro 5y agoI would guess it's just a genetic glitch and not some conscious decision or purposeful design.
- daveguy 5y agoIt doesn't have to be a conscious decision or purposeful design to be "there for a reason". Evolution tends toward solutions because the population that happens to be closer to a solution are more likely to survive. Nothing the op said was incompatible with evolution.
- alisonkisk 5y agoEvolution doesn't have "reasons" (pre hoc is random mutation) but it has "justifications" (post hoc is natural selection).
- samhw 5y agoIn addition to that, it's certainly not a 'glitch'. A genetic glitch would be a (possibly short-lived) mutation which is still in the 'beta' phase, so to speak, or else a harmful side effect of an otherwise beneficial mutation (e.g. albinism). This is a paradigmatic example of an ordinary useful mutation which persisted because it increased fitness.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago>> FTA: They admit to being completely baffled about why the mamba would produce it. It's because they are scientists. Scientists are always "baffled", in the news.
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- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Avicebron 5y agoshii...strap a tube to my arm and hit me with that mamba juice. be flying for hours... or more likely arrested for animal abuse, but hey, imagine being the cool druggie who can get high and defend his territory with a snake. this under-bridge be mine.
- fctorial 5y agoMust be why this man does this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucpGlWnq8EE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucpGlWnq8EE
- mrestko 5y agoThe title is not good--lots of meds are betting than morphine...that's why we have all the other opioids: hydromorphone, fentanyl, remifentinil, sufentinil, oxycododone, etc. If you look at the Nature abstract linked from the news article, all they claim there is that the analgesic effects can be, "as strong as morphine." This also a protein which is inherently more expensive and difficult to turn into a drug compared with a small molecule.
- rich_sasha 5y agoFor a popular magazine that seems fine... analgesic as strong as morphine + fewer side effects = better overall ... no?
- mrestko 5y agoIt's hard to know what the side effects are since it hasn't been tested in humans and is not in a form where it would be a useful drug. We've had plently of promising drugs turn out to have unexpected and sometimes devestating side effects when tested in humans.
- trutannus 5y agoIt's fine, morphine is used as a 'standard' for opiate and other pain killer efficacy. So often that the term 'morphine equivalency' exists in medical documents.
- Symbiote 5y agoAlso diamorphine (heroine), which has several advantages over morphine and is used medically outside the USA.
- samhw 5y agoYup, it's used widely in end-of-life care here in the UK (I remember my mum once saying to me, when we were discussing euthanasia, that there's no doctor in the country who hasn't 'accidentally' given a little too much diamorphine to someone who was on the verge of death and in pain). It's useful, but I imagine it's tainted in the US by the association with street heroin - somewhat curiously, since fentanyl apparently hasn't been tainted by its recreational associations.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dreamcompiler 5y agoSurprised they didn't say whether it causes constipation. That's one of the most annoying side effects of morphine for most people. (Maybe the original Nature article addresses this but it's paywalled.)
- KMag 5y agoI passed a kidney stone a month and a half ago, and switched from a codeine-based painkiller to ibuprofen because of the constipation. (Also, for me, at least at the prescribed dose, codeine-with-acetaminophen/paracetamol gave less pain relief than 400 mg of ibuprofen. I'm also aware that morphine is significantly stronger than codeine.) The increased abdominal pressure from the constipation probably helped the stone pass a bit faster, but it also certainly seemed to increase the pain. On a side note, drink plenty of water. 42 is pretty young for passing a kidney stone. Working from home this past year, my wife would give me a hard time that some days I drank only 500 mL or so of water. (I drank plenty of coffee in the office, but cutting down on coffee while working from home unfortunately didn't translate into replacing coffee with water.) My urologist says I should be drinking at least 30 mL of water per kg body mass per day. Yes, most of our food is mostly water, but at least for me, that didn't cut it. I've heard people compare passing a kidney stone to childbirth, but I'm sure that's a gross exaggeration. A really bad hangover is worse, but a kidney stone is painful enough that I was pretty useless for 5 days and could only sleep in a really hot bath, and then only for about 1-2 hours per day. You don't want a kidney stone.
- GordonS 5y agoThere is a lot of research aiming to produce strong, non-opioid pain killers from venom peptides, from spiders, centipedes, sea anemones and other creatures. These peptides have an action on sodium channels, specifically Nav1.7, so the article doesn't seem particularly surprising (although the article was from 2012, so it might have been back then). We already have several drugs that work on sodium channels, but they are non-selective, and there are several sub-types of sodium channel with different uses - such as regulating heart beat. The challenge, is to produce a drug that selectively blocks sodium channel Nav1.7 - the idea being that this will reduce pain while not affecting your heart etc. I suffer from chronic neuropathic pain, so I've been somewhat following this research for a while.
- temp0826 5y agoSnake bites can be abused too! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20255373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20255373 No mention of Kambo (secretion from a tree frog) but it does contain opiate analogues as well
- shreyshnaccount 5y agoand so is a bullet, instant pain relief /s
- xkcd-sucks 5y agoA similar venom-based analgesic that actually became a drug is Ziconotide [0], a selective calcium channel blocker contained in a certain type of cone snail venom (the actual drug has some minor modifications for stability but the structure was already perfect re: activity). Unfortunately as a peptide it's not orally active and has to be administered directly into cerebrospinal fluid. I only know about it because the person who discovered it gave a wonderful talk at my grad school. Apparently venomous sea snails produce incredibly diverse mixtures of incredibly receptor-selective peptides. They used a cheap phenotypic screen in which snails were purchased from fishermen, venom fractionated by HPLC, individual fractions injected into mice, behaviors were characterized and interesting ones flagged for further study. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziconotide https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziconotide
- Nasrudith 5y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the venom was addictive too. I mean it isn't like it had any selective pressure for preventing or causing addiction. Although the latter may come as a side effect. I can see a purpose for a multifaceted venom - both synergy of "speedballing" the lethal dose and making it harder biochemically for a creature to develop an immunity. Like always with evolved systems purpose is an emergent thing by what reproduces and survives the best. It is a tautology of "things that spread and stay you have more of".