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    The Potential of the Hose-bridge to Mitigate Snake Mortality on Low Volume Roadways

    Measuring Sexual Size Dimorphism and Sexual Body Component Dimorphism in Snakes: Sexual, Population, and Seasonal Variation in Body Size Relationships...

    Snakes in the Subarctic: Fall Phenology of the Red-Sided Garter Snake (Thamnophis sirtalis parietalis) at a Northern Range Extreme

    Seasonal Variation in Metabolism and Immunity in the Rubber Boa (Charina bottae)

    Influence of Prey Size on Reproduction among Populations of Diamond-backed Watersnakes (Nerodia rhombifer)

    Effects of Wildfires on Northern Pacific Rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus) Growth and Microhabitat Use in Washington State

    Neuromuscular Activity and Prey Specificity of North American Coral Snake Venoms: Micrurus browni as a Case Study

    Genetic Diversity of the Eastern Massasauga (Sistrurus catenatus) in Berrien and Van Buren Counties, Southwest Michigan

    Do Free-ranging Rattlesnakes Use Thermal Cues to Detect and Evaluate Prey?

    Mind the Gap: Effects of Habitat and Climate on Northern Water Snake (Nerodia sipedon sipedon) Distribution in Maine

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    Accepted Abstracts

     

     

     

    The Functional Activity of Procoagulant Snake Venoms and Their Paraspecific Neutralisation by Antivenom

    Ainsworth, Stuart

    Slagboom, Julien

    Casewell, Nicholas R. 

     

    Alistair Reid Venom Research Unit

    Parasitology Department

    Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

    Pembroke Place

    Liverpool, L3 5QA, UK

     

    Snakebite causes over 100,000 deaths each year, making it one of the world's most neglected tropical diseases. The specific pathologies resulting from envenoming are dictated by the toxin composition of venom, which varies by species, geography and ontogeny. Such extensive toxin variation severely restricts the paraspecific efficacy of antivenom therapies used to treat snakebite victims, as the active immunoglobulins are limited to neutralising only those venom toxins present in the immunising mixture. With a view to devising new types of ‘pathology-specific’ snakebite treatments with global, rather than geographically restricted, efficacy, we characterised the coagulopathic nature of a variety of snake venoms via their interaction with different targets in the blood clotting cascade. Different snake venoms act on Factor X, prothrombin and/or fibrinogen in a variable manner to initiate consumption coagulopathy, which is one of the most common medically-important pathologies observed following snakebite. Despite the variability in functional targets, we find that a number of existing antivenoms exhibit surprisingly high levels of cross-neutralisation against procoagulant venoms in vitro and in vivo, seemingly due to the convergent evolution of similar venom toxin profiles in different snake species. These results hold much promise for the future design of targeted toxin-specific antibodies to treat pathologies caused by envenoming, irrespective of the snake species responsible.

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