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Sea Snail Toxin Offers Promise For Pain
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Dec 12, 2006 03:00 PM
from the take-two-drops-and-call-me-in-the-morning dept.
from the take-two-drops-and-call-me-in-the-morning dept.
Khyber writes to tell us about research out of Australia that holds out hope for chronic pain sufferers. The toxin of a sea snail, called conotoxin, has a component that has been shown to directly target pain receptors in experimental animals. Unlike essentially all existing pain relievers, conotoxin seems to suppress pain without side effects. Human trials are a year away.
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Toxin...Toxic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Toxin...Toxic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehushtan [wikipedia.org]
Numbers 21:4-9
(Pardon the King James, couldn't find a modern transation in short order)
21.6. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died. 7. Therefore the people came to Moses, and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us. And Moses prayed for the people. 8. And the Lord said unto
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It's amazing how similar humans are no matter where they are from. Take the swastika for instance. It has turned up, in many different forms, and in many different cultures prior to the Nazi use of it. In fact, they borrowed it from other anti-semitic groups that used it before them.
Back on topic now. I wonder how many other cultures have used a snake on a rod as a symbol of heal
Modern translations (Score:2, Offtopic)
You may want to bookmark http://www.biblegateway.com/ [biblegateway.com] or http://www.blueletterbible.org/ [blueletterbible.org] for future reference.
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The snake on the staff...
As shown here [punkstuff.com].
What is good in life? (Score:2)
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It's all in the dosage. *ANYTHING* (even, say oxygen or water) is toxic if given in a high enough dose.
Including ethanol, nicotine and caffeine to name a few.
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Including ethanol, nicotine and caffeine to name a few.
With the notable exception of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. There has never been a single fatal case of THC poisoning in all of medical history.
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Re:Toxin...Toxic? (Score:5, Insightful)
to translate slashdot stories. "Unlike essentially all existing pain relievers,
conotoxin seems to suppress pain without side effects." really means "Like all
existing drugs that haven't been through large scale trials, conotoxin appears
to be free from side-effects. The toxicity is probably dependent on the dose, the
patient, the length of usage and about a million other (currently) unknown
factors.
Parent
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Wouldn't be the first time we've used a toxin in non-toxic ways. Botox (botulism toxin), anyone? I'm sure it hurts like hell if you're *stung* with the toxin, but has no such effect when ingested. (or something).
Wow, talk about being completely off-base. Botulinum toxin is never transmitted through bites or stings. You either get it from dirty wounds or from ingesting it in contaminated food. And it doesn't sting. The way it kills is that it paralyzes you, including the muscles you use for breathing.
Misleading title (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Misleading title (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
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This should come in handy for anyone that (Score:2)
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People are complex intertwined systems, you can almost never change something without unintentionally changing something else.
Bitter Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
The bitter irony is that it's these very industrial and technological advancements that make the discovery, analysis, synthesis, mass production, and world-wide distribution at affordable prices of this painkiller possible in the first place.
It's depressing how many people demand the benefits of civilization, without accepting any of its tradeoffs.
Re:Bitter Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
That's usually the hyperbolic strawman of the anti-conservationist who extrapolates spending money on better alternatives to current tech and trying to use less of what we do now (e.g. drive more fuel efficient cars) into some crazy luddite back-to-nature wildlife.
Personally I think that point of view is retarded. I'm a conservationist and environmentalist because I like the benefits of civilization, and I would like for myself and as many generations of descendents as possible to be able to keep them.
One of the tradeoffs of civilization is figuring out how to make it sustainable. Our current method is not sustainable. Refusing to change because you want to keep your lifestyle is to guarantee that you lose that lifestyle.
Anyway, I think slug-slime pain killers are awesome.
Parent
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And the work I do now, to keep body and soul together, not only is it easier than the work I would've had to do without civilization, but my quality of life is better, the scope of leisure activities available to me is greater, and the surplus wealth I have accumulated is greater, than anything our primitive cave-dwelling ancestors ever enjoyed. And that's with The Man exploiting me every day.
What does your post-apocalyptic Rockefeller Ce
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Where exactly is this happening?
Where I'm from--a planet called "Earth"--the lack of widely-distributed and affordable drugs is a pretty big problem, which is currently being exacerbated in innumerable ways due to globalization, although the pundits claimed--still claim--that the opposite should be true.
It's depressing how many people demand the benefits of civilization, without accepting any of its tradeoffs.
To me, it's somewhat more depressing how many people fa
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it seems obvious to me that in the long term the expensive-but-clean process is probably better
That might be obvious, but are you willing to pay for it? More accurately, are enough of your like minded bretheren willing to pay for it?
To further derail things, what constitutes 'better'? In the long term is it better to kill all the buffalo to help the natives die so we can drive them off the land we want to develop for the debatable overall improvement of humanity? Better to test snail toxins on rabbits so we can one day keep humans from having to live with pain? Better for that one specific rabb
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I used to ask people this question:
You've been religiously buying the same Lotto number for 20 years, now God offers you two options:
a. That Lotto number turns out to be the biggest winner in the history, except you forgot to buy it that particular week. At least you know your magic number is a winner, or
b. That Lotto number is never a winner, and you'll n
Re:Bitter Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
So, you think global warming is an advancement. Personally I see it as an accounting issue; hidden costs which some people pass on to other people, in particular future generations. Perhaps the reason why the Northeast is considered so 'liberal' is that one doesn't have to go far to find a brown field. A place of dead earth, unfit for human development, left by some long gone business which was unburdened by environmental regulation. The cleanup of someone else's mess is a continuing burden, both on the treasury, and the health of people who have long ago, if ever, benefited from their creation.
At one point cities didn't have sewers or trash collection, they just threw their daily waste into the middle of the street. Often the contents of chamber pots would rain down on the pedestrians below, and the rivers became so choked with human and animal filth, that they caused plague, and misery. Eventually cities, and towns raised taxes for sewers, required trash collection, then sanitary sewers, and eventually waste treatment facilities. Today one doesn't think of these things as unnecessary, or too costly, as the benefits of these requirements obviously far outweigh the costs of not having them, yet when the laws were first developed buffoons such as yourself, fought their implementation as being too costly, and unneeded. History has proven those fools wrong, as it will you.
Parent
Ouch. (Score:5, Funny)
Experimental animals? (Score:5, Funny)
Is that the next step?
Experimental animals -> regular animals -> experimental humans -> regular humans??
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Wow.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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Since you're a student, money is probably an issue, but you can most likely find someone who will charge on a sliding scale or otherwise work out a reasonable fee with you.
osteopathic manipulation to release stored trauma (Score:2)
From the original poster:
I suffered a lower-lumbar spinal fracture almost seven months ago. The docto
So Let Me Get This Straight (Score:2)
Or I can get the pretty girl sitting next to me to kiss it better [slashdot.org]
I have a name already (Score:2)
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Before anyone else chimes in.. (Score:5, Informative)
Elan already has a Conotixin on the market (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.theage.com.au/news/creative--media/pain killer-comes-out-of-its-shell/2005/07/24/112214372 8598.html [theage.com.au]
Links to university release & the article in P (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=1104
and if you have the chops to read the study, here is a link to the abstract7 030 [pnas.org]
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/45/1
looks like the full text is free (unless my institution's IP range has a subscriptionn and it would otherwise be locked down)
Different from ziconotide? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't understand why nothing in the article even mentions this already-existing drug derived from (probably different) conotoxins.
At least one conotoxin already commercialized. (Score:4, Informative)
Presumably this is a different component of conotoxin.
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Be nice if they could find something better than morphine though. I've been on drips twice in my life. (Yeah, I guess I'm accident prone.) Anyway, 1) it's not so much pain relief as much as "I'm so euphoric that I don't care that my arm hurts like a bitch," especially for something like getting a wound scrubbed out with a Brillo pad, 2) the side effects suck and 3) coming down is like the worst hangover you've ever had, only worse. Even thinking about it right now makes me nause
Cone Snail Venom (Score:2, Interesting)
Cone shells (Score:3, Interesting)
The proper name for them is not "sea snails" (there are lots of snails in the sea). The are called cone shells or cone snails. See the Wikipedia article on them [wikipedia.org].
I used to see them when snorkeling in the Red Sea. They are one of the few snails that are "clean" since they have a mantle withdrawn over the shell and hence algae and barnacles do not attach to it. The other snail that does that is the cowrie shell. If you find a dirty shell, then it is because the animal inside it has died, and the algae has move on it.
The cone shells are very very toxic and as far as I recall have no antidote. They have a harpoon like needle that injects venom, and a proboscis to swallow prey with.
One true horror story from Sinai in Egypt was about a woman tourist who was found dead under the water after scuba diving. They took the body out and checked the regulator, the air supply,
Pain medication (Score:3, Informative)
Opiates affect the way the brain perceives pain. They work great and are relatively safe - but addictive. Some people find them pleasurable but most people don't really enjoy the experience. Both groups can become addicted if they use them often enough. The first group is simply more likely to do so for non-medical reasons.
Nobody is really sure how acetaminophen (Tylenol) actually works. It appears to be a variant on anti-inflammatory drugs with fewer side effects but it may also have some direct effect on the brain. It's safe and effective for minor pains but its usefulness is limited for severe pain because larger doses are toxic to the liver. This one also kills many people every year who don't take the warnings seriously. Many of the victims are children.
A new drug that affects the pain receptors directly could be a welcome addition to this arsenal.
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you are such a govt stooge. (Score:2)
Alcaholics are more failures and tend to ruin others lifes too and families, but hey its legal, because the govt
gets their cut in taxes and thats good.
Re:Brought to you by the Military Industrial Compl (Score:2)
Problem is, you would want ordinary soldiers to be able to use it without a bunch of gadgets to fumble around with. It should be easy--like swinging an axe! You could call it a bioaxe [planetfortress.com]! (Warning: link has embedded MIDI)
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Just because your chronic pain is self-induced, it doesn't mean all people's pain is so caused.