Cross neutralization of coral snake venoms by commercial Australian snake antivenoms

AbstractContext: Although rare, coral snake envenomation is a serious health threat in Brazil, because of the highly neurotoxic venom and the scarcely available antivenom. The major bottleneck for antivenom production is the low availability of venom. Furthermore, the available serum is not effective against all coral snake species found in Brazil. An alternative to circumvent the lack of venom for serum production and the restricted protection of the actually available antivenom would be of great value. We compared the Brazilian coral snake and mono and polyvalent Australian antivenoms in terms of reactivity and protection.Methods: The immunoreactivity of venoms from 9 coral snakes species were assayed by ELISA and western blot using the Brazilian Micrurus and the Australian pentavalent as well as monovalent anti-Notechis, Oxyuranus and Pseudechis antivenoms. Neutralization assays were performed in mice, using 3 LD50 of the venoms, incubated for 30 minutes with 100 μL of antivenom/animal.Discussion: All ...