TUCSON, AZ (CBS5) -
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Anascorp®, an antivenom produced in Mexico and tested by University of Arizona, for use in treating scorpion sting patients.
"This is an historic event," said Dr. Leslie Boyer, director of the UA's VIPER Institute (Venom Immunochemistry, Pharmacology and Emergency Response Institute) and lead investigator on the clinical trials. "This is the first-ever drug approved for this use by the FDA; the first-ever drug that we are aware of being developed fully in Latin America and subsequently approved by the FDA; the first-ever scorpion antivenom proved effective under controlled clinical trials; and the first-ever antivenom with so few allergic reactions."
Nearly 2,000 patients in Arizona and Nevada have received the antivenom through the clinical trials conducted by Boyer, a pediatrician and toxicologist at the UA College of Medicine and her colleagues.
The FDA approval is the culmination of a nearly 12-year collaboration of academic and clinical researchers with partners in business and industry from both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.
In Arizona, about 8,000 scorpion stings occur each year. Several hundred of these result in serious nerve poisoning and require medical treatment. Nearly all of these patients are young children whose breathing may be severely affected by the effects of the venom requiring hospitalization.
"This antivenom basically takes symptoms away in a very short time. What was a life-threatening disease that would put kids in the pediatric ICU has become, for most of them, an outpatient disease," said Dr. Andreas Theodoru, UA professor of pediatrics.
Decades ago, Arizonans had access to a different kind of antivenom that was produced at Arizona State University, but in 1999 the researcher's approaching retirement put an end to new production.
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