Hello fellow steemians! Today, i would like to enlighten us more about this scary arachnid and it venom. We might have been seeing this arachnid daily or once in a while in our surroundings or vicinities but do we know a liter of this venom worth more than the largest gold bar in the world? Yes! It does.
According to Venom Researchers, a gallon (3.7 liters) of scorpion venom worth $38.5m. You surprise?
Why So Expensive?
Scorpion Venom contain more than 4.5 million unstudied compounds. Many Bioactive Compounds discovered in this venom has made many scientists get busy in the lab on daily basis for further research.
In medical applications, scorpion venom is so essential. It has been used in developing and manufacturing of many new drugs and still continues.
Scorpion Venom has proteins and these proteins shows antimicrobial activity from its toxins.
The protein, however, can be used to treat pain in humans who suffer from multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis and many more.
The continuous usage of this venom in medical application is of wide range. Many surgeons has found this helpful in heart transplanting on patients who has heart diseases.
Having many species of scorpions (about 2,000), up to 40 species are poisonous enough to kill a human according to researchers.
Out of the thousands species available, there is a particular one which is Red or Blue in colour, Scientific name as Rhopalurus junceus.
The drug developed from this specie's venom, showed anti-cancer activity and it has been tested on more than 9,000 cancer patients. Many positive results was achieved when the drug was demonstrated against various types of cancer.
In heart transplanting surgery, Scorpion Venom is needful because it would reduce the risk of failure when organ is moved from a donor to a recipient (transplantation).
Scientists discovering more health benefits of this arachnid's venom on daily basis, didn't relent in their lab work research. They tends to continue their research but just too cumbersome in knowing all in a glance because the Venom contains millions of unstudied compounds.
However, scientists didn't wait till they have full study on the venom and it compounds. Any benefits discovered would be added straight away in medical application in developing new drugs for the ailments discovered for.
One of the health benefits of the venom is peptide found in it which is responsible in the treatment of autoimmune diseases. There also, scientist discovered the venom is useful in developing pain relief drugs.
Natural pesticides are also made from this venom. Toxins present in the venom, renders all pest useless and kills them when the pesticides are added to plants.
In prevention of malaria, scorpion venom has also been researched tackling malaria parasites. This was performed in the University of Maryland, 2011, by a researcher who modified a parasitic fungus loaded with a substance found in scorpion venom. The result of the experiment came out positively which was able to attack malaria parasites in mosquitoes.
Furthermore, according to researchers from The University of Leeds, a toxin was found in the scorpion venom called, margatoxin. This toxin was said to be responsible in preventing failure to occur during vein transplant process.
However, despite the vital role scorpion venom is playing in the medical field, there are draw backs affecting the abundant availability of this venom.
According to researchers, it was said that scorpion venom is progressing very slowly due to its scarcity. It's not available of large quantities and this made a gallon (3.7 litters) so high in purchase.
One of the major set backs also is that, the venom gotten from a scorpion is less than 0.5mg which is low. It was also said that, not all scorpion venom are useful. Meaning that the useful ones are those species that are highly poisonous which are enough to kill a human and that's about 30 to 40 species out of about 2000 species. This is too low.
Milking, which is the process of collecting venom from scorpion has not also been an easy task.
Though, a robot (Lightweight VES - 4) has been built to collect venom from scorpion compare to the manual method used before in milking using electric stimulation which was harmful to the animal, but yet the process was still very slow.
The usage of this robot makes it safe and fast in collection but the liquid is not just in abundance due to low output from each scorpion and few species that are highly poisonous which are the main target to operate on.
CONCLUSION
Many sick patients across the globe are getting treated daily on various kinds of diseases with this Venom. Most especially the cancer patients. Scorpion venom has been used to develop drugs to tackle various types of cancer and other life threatening diseases. Big thanks to the researchers involved in this.
Scorpion venom is an exceptional fluid in the medical field because of it highly important usages. Therefore, for this reason, the set backs should be tackled to have this venom in large quantities.
