How Is Antivenom Made?

With over 5.4million snake bites around the globe anually, antivenom saves countless lives every year. In this video we dicuss the history of Antivenom and how its made
The first recorded use of Antivenom was in Vietnam in the 1880s. French immunologist Albert Calmette was working in Saigon vaccinating local people for small pox and rabies when he noticed how many people where being killed by Indian cobras. Using his understanding on immunology and antibodies he deviced the first Antivenom by injecting horses with non lethal doses of cobra venom until the horses displayed a resistance to the venom, then he extracted blood from the horses containing the venom fighting antibodies. This method works so well it’s been more or less unchanged ever since.
Today horses are injected with venom different species of snakes and after several months 10 litres of blood is taken. These days the blood is passed through an a machine which seperate some the red blood cells from the plasma and antibodies before returning them back to the horse. The plasma is then refined and that is Antivenom. Unfortunately Antivenom is usually species specific or treats only several closely related species which is perfect for places where snake identification is possible.
Universal antivenins called polyvalent are made by combining the antibodies of several snake venoms into one product, for example in australia out polyvalent Antivenom is made up of black snake Antivenom, tiger snake Antivenom, brownsnake, taipan and death adder Antivenom. Indian polyvalent on the other hand treats Indian cobra venom, russels viper and saw snake viper bites and common Krait
Universal Antivenom is ideal when snakes can’t be identified of hospitals cannot keep many specific antivenoms but generally require much higher doses.
While today the World Health Organization used the word Antivenom many people still refer to Antivenom and antivenin, a word which originally came from Albert Calmette being French and venin ring French for venom meaning they mean the exact same thing
Wether you call it antivenin or Antivenom this product saves countless lives every year. Globally it’s estimated 5.4 million people are bitten by snakes annually with 80,099 - 150,000 deaths which would be dramatically higher without the invention of Antivenom
In australia our tiger snake and death added bites killed more then half of victims before Antivenom was available and taipan bites had a 100% mortality
Thanks to calmetes work we can now live much more safely with these incredible reptiles

Видео How Is Antivenom Made? канала Wicked Wildlife