Oukkache Naoual, El Jaoudi Rachid, Ghalim Noreddine, Chgoury Fatima, Bouhaouala Balkiss, Mdaghri Naima El, Sabatier Jean-Marc
Laboratory of Venoms and Toxins, Pasteur Institute of Morocco, 1 Place Louis Pasteur, Casablanca 20360, Morocco.
Laboratory of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, University Mohamed V-Souissi, Rabat 6203, Morocco.
Toxins (Basel). 2014 Jun 12;6(6):1873-81. doi: 10.3390/toxins6061873.
Scorpion stings and snake bites are major health hazards that lead to suffering of victims and high mortality. Thousands of injuries associated with such stings and bites of venomous animals occur every year worldwide. In North Africa, more than 100,000 scorpion stings and snake bites are reported annually. An appropriate determination of the 50% lethal doses (LD₅₀) of scorpion and snake venoms appears to be an important step to assess (and compare) venom toxic activity. Such LD₅₀ values are also commonly used to evaluate the neutralizing capacity of specific anti-venom batches. In the present work, we determined experimentally the LD₅₀ values of reference scorpion and snake venoms in Swiss mice, and evaluated the influence of two main venom injection routes (i.e., intraperitoneal (IP) versus intravenous (IV)). The analysis of experimental LD₅₀ values obtained with three collected scorpion venoms indicates that Androctonus mauretanicus (Am) is intrinsically more toxic than Androctonus australis hector (Aah) species, whereas the latter is more toxic than Buthus occitanus (Bo). Similar analysis of three representative snake venoms of the Viperidae family shows that Cerastes cerastes (Cc) is more toxic than either Bitis arietans (Ba) or Macrovipera lebetina (Ml) species. Interestingly, the venom of Elapidae cobra snake Naja haje (Nh) is far more toxic than viper venoms Cc, Ml and Ba, in agreement with the known severity of cobra-related envenomation. Also, our data showed that viper venoms are about three-times less toxic when injected IP as compared to IV, distinct from cobra venom Nh which exhibited a similar toxicity when injected IP or IV. Overall, this study clearly highlights the usefulness of procedure standardization, especially regarding the administration route, for evaluating the relative toxicity of individual animal venoms. It also evidenced a marked difference in lethal activity between venoms of cobra and vipers, which, apart from the nature of toxins, might be attributed to the rich composition of high molecular weight enzymes in the case of viper venoms.
蝎子蜇伤和蛇咬伤是主要的健康危害，会给受害者带来痛苦并导致高死亡率。每年在全球范围内都会发生成千上万起与有毒动物蜇伤和咬伤相关的伤害事件。在北非，每年报告的蝎子蜇伤和蛇咬伤事件超过10万起。适当确定蝎子和蛇毒的半数致死剂量（LD₅₀）似乎是评估（并比较）毒液毒性活性的重要一步。这些LD₅₀值也常用于评估特定抗蛇毒血清批次的中和能力。在本研究中，我们通过实验确定了参考蝎子和蛇毒在瑞士小鼠中的LD₅₀值，并评估了两种主要毒液注射途径（即腹腔注射（IP）与静脉注射（IV））的影响。对三种采集到的蝎子毒液获得的实验LD₅₀值的分析表明，毛里塔尼亚杀人蝎（Am）本质上比澳链尾蝎（Aah）毒性更强，而后者比北非黑肥尾蝎（Bo）毒性更强。对蝰蛇科三种代表性蛇毒的类似分析表明，角蝰（Cc）比鼓腹咝蝰（Ba）或中亚蝮（Ml）毒性更强。有趣的是，眼镜蛇科眼镜蛇埃及眼镜蛇（Nh）的毒液比蝰蛇毒液Cc、Ml和Ba毒性大得多，这与已知的眼镜蛇相关中毒的严重程度一致。此外，我们的数据表明，与静脉注射相比，蝰蛇毒液腹腔注射时的毒性约低三倍，这与眼镜蛇毒液Nh不同，Nh腹腔注射或静脉注射时表现出相似的毒性。总体而言，本研究清楚地强调了程序标准化的有用性，特别是关于给药途径，以评估单个动物毒液的相对毒性。它还证明了眼镜蛇毒液和蝰蛇毒液在致死活性上存在显著差异，除了毒素的性质外，这可能归因于蝰蛇毒液中富含高分子量酶的成分。
