Title

Authors

Affiliation

¹Infectious Disease Programme, Department of Microbiology; ²Venom and Toxin Research Programme, Department of Anatomy; Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117597

Email

micramar@nus.edu.sg; *Corresponding author

Article Type

Current Trends

Date

Received December 14, 2011; Accepted December 17, 2011; Published January 06, 2012

Natural inhibitors occupy an important place in the potential to neutralize the toxic effects caused by snake venom proteins and enzymes. It has been well recognized for several years that animal sera, some of the plant and marine extracts are the most potent in neutralizing snake venom phospholipase A₂ (svPLA₂). The implication of this review to update the latest research work which has been accomplished with svPLA₂ inhibitors from various natural sources like animal, marine organisms presents a compilation of research in this field over the past decade and revisiting the previous research report including those found in plants. In addition to that the bioactive compounds/inhibitor molecules from diverse sources like aristolochic alkaloid, flavonoids and neoflavonoids from plants, hydrocarbones -2, 4 dimethyl hexane, 2 methylnonane, and 2, 6 dimethyl heptane obtained from traditional medicinal plants Tragia involucrata (Euphorbiaceae) member of natural products involved for the inhibitory potential of phospholipase A₂(PLA₂) enzymes in vitro and also decrease both oedema induced by snake venom as well as human synovial fluid PLA₂. Besides marine natural products that inhibit PLA₂ are manoalide and its derivatives such as scalaradial and related compounds, pseudopterosins and vidalols, tetracylne from synthetic chemicals etc. There is an overview of the role of PLA₂ in inflammation that provides a rationale for seeking inhibitors of PLA₂ as anti-inflammatory agents. However, more studies should be considered to evaluate antivenom efficiency of sera and other agents against a variety of snake venoms found in various parts of the world. The implications of these new groups of svPLA₂ toxin inhibitors in the context of our current understanding of snake biology as well as in the development of new novel antivenoms therapeutics agents in the efficient treatment of snake envenomations are discussed.

Citation

Samy et al. Bioinformation 8(1): 048-057 (2012)
 

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.