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The Bold and the Beautiful: a Neurotoxicity Comparison of New World Coral Snakes in the Micruroides and Micrurus Genera and Relative Neutralization by Antivenom

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Abstract

Coral snake envenomations are well characterized to be lethally neurotoxic. Despite this, few multispecies, neurotoxicity and antivenom efficacy comparisons have been undertaken and only for the Micrurus genus; Micruroides has remained entirely uninvestigated. As the USA’s supplier of antivenom has currently stopped production, alternative sources need to be explored. The Mexican manufacturer Bioclon uses species genetically related to USA species, thus we investigated the efficacy against Micrurus fulvius (eastern coral snake), the main species responsible for lethal envenomations in the USA as well as additional species from the Americas. The use of Coralmyn® coral snake antivenom was effective in neutralizing the neurotoxic effects exhibited by the venom of M. fulvius but was ineffective against the venoms of Micrurus tener, Micrurus spixii, Micrurus pyrrhocryptus, and Micruroides euryxanthus. Our results suggest that the Mexican antivenom may be clinically useful for the treatment of M. fulvius in the USA but may be of only limited efficacy against the other species studied.

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Acknowledgements

DY was supported by a Monash University PhD Scholarship and DD was supported by a University of Queensland PhD Scholarship.

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Author notes

  1. Daryl C. Yang, James Dobson, and Chip Cochran contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Monash Venom Group, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, 3800, Australia

    Daryl C. Yang, Iwan Hendrikx & Wayne C. Hodgson

  2. Venom Evolution Lab, School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD, 4072, Australia

    James Dobson, Daniel Dashevsky & Bryan G. Fry

  3. Department of Earth and Biological Sciences, Loma Linda University, Loma Linda, CA, 92350, USA

    Chip Cochran

  4. Department of Biosciences, College of Science, Swansea University, Swansea, SA2 8PP, UK

    Kevin Arbuckle

  5. Instituto de Biotecnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Av. Universidad # 2001, 62210, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico

    Melisa Benard & Alejandro Alagón

  6. Venom Immunochemistry, Pharmacology and Emergency Response (VIPER) Institute, University of Arizona College of Medicine, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Leslie Boyer

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  1. Daryl C. Yang
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Contributions

DY, JD, WH, and BGF conceived and designed the experiments; DY, DD, DD, KA, WH, and BGF performed the experiments; DY, JD, CC, DD, KA, MB, LB, AA, IH, WH, and BGF analyzed the data and wrote the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Wayne C. Hodgson or Bryan G. Fry.

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Yang, D.C., Dobson, J., Cochran, C. et al. The Bold and the Beautiful: a Neurotoxicity Comparison of New World Coral Snakes in the Micruroides and Micrurus Genera and Relative Neutralization by Antivenom. Neurotox Res 32, 487–495 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12640-017-9771-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12640-017-9771-4

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