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Although suffering from snakebites might not be a major global problem, they are still a great danger for people living in rural and remote regions of the world. Snakebites kill around 175,000 per year and the deaths are often due to the fact that victims cannot reach hospitals on time. The fact that hospitals have these cures become useless if people cannot access them, which is why researchers have been trying to develop some kind of treatments that would be administered on the field to keep a person alive in time to reach a hospital. In a new study, after inducing the symptoms of a deadly cobra bite, researchers found a potentially new way of treating snakebites in the wild.

According to the researchers, when doctors are unaware of which anti-venom drug to use, they administer a drug called neostigmine intravenously. This drug is capable of stalling the effects of the venom while buying time for the doctors to assess the situation at hand. Although this drug works quite effectively, using it in the field can be extremely dangerous. Neostigmine, especially since it has to be administered intravenously, could lead to death if the person accidently overdoses. Since this drug is too tricky to handle outside of a hospital, an emergency room physician from San Francisco, Matt Lewin, created a study to test the effects of a neostigmine intranasal spray that would have the same effects but not the same risks.  

Lewin, who is also a medical adviser to the international research expeditions for the California Academy of Sciences, worked with an anesthesiology professor from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), Philip Bickler. Together, they discovered that a spray version of the drug could potentially treat some of the symptoms, such as paralysis, of myasthenia gravis. In order to test their theory, they were able to recruit a healthy 45-year-old man who volunteered to be the lab rat for this risky but controlled experiment.

The researchers gathered a team of anesthesiologist from UCSF and kept a supply of treatments nearby. The volunteer was given a steady drip of mivacurium, which is a drug that mimics the symptoms of cobra venom. The volunteer started to exhibit symptoms, such as droopy eyelids and blurry vision within the first hour and a half. Once the participant reached 115 minutes, paralytic symptoms, such as the inability to raise his head, started to show. At the same time, breathing became more difficult. The team of doctors then used the neostigmine spray, which is administered through his nose. The researchers found that the spray was effective and reversed the symptoms within minutes.

The findings of this study could change how people deal with venomous snakebites within the near future. The number of fatalities caused by snakes could dwindle dramatically. Lewin now hopes to continue this kind of research using other types of drugs.

"We were just hoping with this to start the conversation," Lewin said according to NPR. "Can you think of another catastrophic condition like this for which there is no out-of-hospital treatment at all?"

The study was published in the journal, Clinical Case Reports.