The resistance of bacteria against the use of conventional antibiotics has become a serious threat to public health and considering the associated side effect with antibiotics; new strategies to find and develop new molecules with novel modes of action has received grate attention in recent years. In this study, when the antibacterial potential of an acidic protein-NN-XIb-PLA2 (Naja naja venom ...

Objective. Most snakebite deaths occur prior to hospital arrival; yet inexpensive, effective, and easy to administer out-of-hospital treatments do not exist. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors can be therapeutic in neurotoxic envenomations when administered intravenously, but nasally delivered drugs could facilitate prehospital therapy for these patients. We tested the feasibility of this idea in ...

Reaction of phospholipase A, (Naja naja naja) with pbromophenacyl bromide leads to almost complete loss of enzymatic activity. The rate of inactivation is pa-dependent with ,pK, = 6.9 for the ionizing residue. p-Bromophenacyl bromide modifies 0.5 mol of histidinelmol of enzyme as judged by amino acid analysis and incorporation studies with W-labeled reagent. The rate of inactivation is affected...

Illustrated descriptions of the larvae of the water mite species of Lebertia longiseta Bader, 1955, Oxus nodigerus Koenike, 1898 and redescription of the larva L. dubia (Thor, 1899) are presented.

Phospholipases A2 from pig pancreas and the venoms from bee, Naja naja and Crotalus atrox have been studied by using a new continuous fluorescence displacement assay that utilizes normal phospholipid substrates [Wilton (1990) Biochem. J. 266, 435-439]. With limiting amounts of substrate, the assay demonstrated stoichiometric conversion into products with both pancreatic and venom enzymes, and t...

Over 24 years, from 1976 to 1999, we conducted a prospective study of overall and cause-specific mortality among the population of 42 villages of south-eastern Senegal. Of 4228 deaths registered during this period, 26 were caused by snakebite, 4 by invertebrate stings and 8 by other wild or domestic animals. The average annual mortality rate from snakebite was 14 deaths per 100,000 population. ...

Using morphological analysis and biochemical testing, here for the first time, we determined the culturable gut bacterial flora (aerobes and facultative anaerobes) in the venomous Black Cobra (Naja naja karachiensis) from South Asia. The findings revealed that these snakes inhabit potentially pathogenic bacteria including Serratia marcescens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Shewanella putrefaciens, Aer...