What are the main clinical applications of snake venom?

Research on snake venom and its clinical application has advanced rapidly in China. A large body of clinical practice has proven that snake venom has the following clinical applications.

(1) Analgesic effect As early as the 1970s, the cobra venom injection developed by Guangzhou Medical College was used clinically and showed good effects on diseases whose main symptom is pain, such as trigeminal neuralgia, sciatica, malignant tumor pain, rheumatic and rheumatoid joint pain, migraine, and herpes zoster. As an analgesic, snake venom has the following advantages: significant and long-lasting effect, a wide safety range, and no drug resistance with continuous use, unlike morphine, it does not produce a sense of addiction or danger. Ketongling, successfully trial-produced from cobra venom by the Kunming Institute of Zoology in 1976, has a very good curative effect on treating various painful diseases.

(2) Lowering blood pressure Foreign reports state that an active peptide isolated from the venom of the Brazilian pit viper (Bothrops jararaca) can block the conversion of angiotensin, thereby reducing the pressor activity of angiotensin in the human body, and can be used to prevent and treat renal hypertension and elevated blood pressure caused by prolonged compression of the renal artery. China has also discovered components in the venom of the five-paced pit viper (Deinagkistrodon acutus) with very obvious blood-pressure-lowering activity, which can be developed into a new antihypertensive drug.

(3) Hemostatic effect Viper venom can convert fibrinogen in the blood into fibrin to form a blood clot, and a 0.1% sterile solution of viper venom can be used to treat bleeding in hemophilia and similar conditions. In addition, it can also be used for the differential diagnosis of blood diseases, becoming one of the clinical testing methods.

(4) Anticancer effect The General Hospital of the Shenyang Military Region used pit viper venom in combination with chemotherapy to treat patients with osteosarcoma, significantly prolonging the patients' survival time. In recent years, the Xindong District Hospital of Changning District, Shanghai, has used snake venom capsules to treat various cancers, with effects such as shrinking tumors and prolonging the survival of cancer patients. China Medical University has carried out research on the inhibition of tumor growth by the crude venom and isolated venom of the Shedao pit viper (Gloydius shedaoensis), and the results showed a tumor inhibition rate of 30%-87.1%. In addition, the PLA 238 Hospital's Army-wide Snake Venom Clinical Application Research Center has completed the extraction and isolation of the anticancer and tumor-inhibiting components of snake venom and entered the animal experiment and clinical stages.

(5) Treatment of cerebral thrombosis and vasculitis The PLA 238 Hospital used the venom of the Changbai Mountain white-eyebrowed pit viper (Gloydius intermedius), purified at high temperature, to obtain a thrombin-like enzyme, pharmaceutically named "Qingshuanmei" (thrombolytic enzyme), which contains no toxic components and is used to treat cerebral thrombosis and its sequelae. Clinical evidence shows that this enzyme is safe and reliable with very good efficacy. In patients with vasculitis, it can rapidly relieve pain and promote appetite and sleep. Some patients with hemiplegia due to cerebral thrombosis have even recovered completely as a result.

(6) Treatment of gastric and duodenal ulcers The research office of China Medical University used venomous snakes to treat 6 cases of gastric and duodenal ulcers. On barium meal and gastroscopy re-examination, after only 30 days of medication, 5 cases were completely cured and 1 case showed ulcer shrinkage. Clinical practice has also proven that the use of snake venom to treat digestive tract ulcers has analgesic and sleep-promoting effects, and has the advantages of increasing patients' appetite and body weight, making it well worth promoting for use.

(7) Preparation of antivenom serum China began producing antivenom serum in the 1930s, and successively succeeded in developing refined antivenom sera against the pit viper, five-paced pit viper, many-banded krait, cobra, **pit viper, sea snake, banded krait, viper and other venomous snakes, making great contributions to saving people bitten by venomous snakes.

(8) Snake venom is also used in drug rehabilitation and military fields Research institutions in the United States have already engaged in research in this area.