How Does Snake Venom (Hemotoxin) Affect You?

WARNING - Not for the faint of heart.

Snake venom is one of the most sophisticated bio-weapon in the natural world. A single drop of cobra venom is enough to kill several men in a few hours. 

There are three different types of snake venom: hemotoxin which affects blood, neurotoxin which affects your nervous system, and cytotoxin which affects your muscles.
To develop antivenom, we need to first understand how venom works.

I recently watched a video that features a Russell's viper, one of the most feared snakes in the world. Its venom is hemotoxic, and the video shows how it affects human blood.

The video shows a wrangler milks the venom, which is then mixed with a glass of blood.

Look at the fangs!

 Within seconds, the blood clots into some form of jelly-ish solid matter.

According to wikipedia,

The coagulant in the venom directly activates factor X, which turns prothrombin intothrombin (that causes coagulation) in the presence of factor V and phospholipid. 

In the dRVVT (dilute Russell's viper venom time) assay, low, rate-limiting concentrations of both Russell's viper venom and phospholipid are used to give a standard clotting time of 23 to 27 seconds.

If diluted Russell's viper venom could induce blood coagulation in 23 seconds, imagine the time needed to clot your blood if you're injected with pure viper venom. 5~6 seconds?

Of course, blood clotting is just one of the many symptoms of viper bite. You would get necrosis (death of cells) near the bite, low blood pressure, vomiting, facial swelling, and kidney failure. Death would soon follow if untreated.

Necrosis from a Rattle Snake bite. Image: rattlesnakebite.org

Even if you do survive the bite, chances are that you would suffer damage to your pituitarygland, a  hormone-secreting gland situated at the base of the brain, causing it to stop secreting the vital homeostasis-regulating hormones, a condition called hypopituitarism.

I now have a new found respect for vipers.



video link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WvnjCkLbvY 

info: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daboia#Venom 
http://www.wisegeek.com/how-does-snake-venom-affect-the-human-body.htm 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemotoxin