Gawdzila:AverageAmericanGuy: It follows from homeopathic principles that something that would cause pain and death in sufficient quantities can be diluted and used as a pain reliever. 

*facepalm*

Homeopathy is full of crap.  They don't just dilute the venom, the isolate a particular peptide or peptides in it and use those at full strength. 

THIS THIS GODDAMMIT THIS. 

I went home last year to grab some things and one of my mom's friends was trying to get her into that crap via printouts on the kitchen table.  I left some counter point printouts with highlighter abundant.  Hope she got the effing message.  Never talked to her about it cause I knew it would turn into a "YOU'RE THE ONE WHO PUSHED ME TO BELIEVE IN SCIENCE DAMMIT WTF MOM" rant. 

No weirder than the New Hotness in type II diabetes medications being--I am not making this up--three generations of a GLP1 agonist that was originally discovered in gila monster venom, to the point that pretty much this entire class of drugs has the affectionate nickname of "lizard spit".  Bonus--it also seems to give the same general benefits (reduction in appetite, improvement in glycemic control particularly with glucagon regulation, and weight loss) as weight-reduction surgery only without the 25% death risk.  :D

And no, they did NOT to my knowledge have gila monsters happily nomming folks with Teh Diabeetus (as odd a mental image as that may be)--the scientists in question already knew about human GLP1 agonists as a target (the human version having a very short in vivo half-life, though) and found a similar compound that is much longer-lasting in gila monster venom. 

(Yes, a lot of venoms do tend to be targets for pharmaceutical research--there's at least one painkiller in the pipeline (if not already approved) based on a cone-snail neurotoxin.  Mambas have a particularly potent neurotoxin (not quite on the level of, say, Australian elapids but close and quite a bit easier to milk) so it's not a huge shocker that some painkiller based on mamba neurotoxins is in the pipeline.) 

/yeah, have a relative or three on the lizard spit//the stuff does work better than oral hypoglycemics, and Lizard Spit 3.0 only has to be injected once a week--even the older versions of Lizard Spit aren't as bad as insulin or the oral hypoglycemics

Also, mambalgins actually seem to trigger an entirely different pathway than opiates--this means there's actually a pretty good shot that they AREN'T addictive (NSAIDS aren't addictive in the sense opiates are, so it's not like there isn't precedent) and (in what may actually be a first in painkillers) actually seems to act on a major pain pathway (the "acid-sensing ion channel", probably the main pain pathway in humans). 

Of course, it's going to require a fair amount of testing, and it's probably going to be about ten years before we see approvals of mambaglin analgesics (and that's if the drugs make it through the Phase I safety trials, the Phase II "ok, hopefully this doesn't have side effects that make people bletcherously ill", and the Phase III effectiveness trials where they compare it in humans with opoid analgesics)...but if the human trials turn out OK, this actually could give a REAL new option...especially in areas where docs are really reluctant to dispense opoid pain meds due to diversion risk (like in, oh, Appalachia) or in cancer or spinal injury patients where the pain is so severe that opoids don't work anymore without a risk of fatal respiratory depression. 

This isn't gonna be an OTC thing, and is probably going to remain an injectable, but it might provide a pretty damn good alternative to people having to take morphine and fentanyl for pain...especially if (as it appears) it doesn't trigger the opiate receptors that actually get you high. 

For those curious, the rather better summary on testing of mambaglin-1 and mambaglin-2 in mice is on Nature's website and Discover.com has a fairly decent layman's writeup--interestingly, this class of drugs may well not have any of the negative side effects of opiates, and if so, this could revolutionise pain management in the same way "lizard spit" GLP1 agonists have revolutionised treatment of type II diabetes. 

Great Porn Dragon:No weirder than the New Hotness in type II diabetes medications being--I am not making this up--three generations of a GLP1 agonist that was originally discovered in gila monster venom, to the point that pretty much this entire class of drugs has the affectionate nickname of "lizard spit".  Bonus--it also seems to give the same general benefits (reduction in appetite, improvement in glycemic control particularly with glucagon regulation, and weight loss) as weight-reduction surgery only without the 25% death risk.  :D

And no, they did NOT to my knowledge have gila monsters happily nomming folks with Teh Diabeetus (as odd a mental image as that may be)--the scientists in question already knew about human GLP1 agonists as a target (the human version having a very short in vivo half-life, though) and found a similar compound that is much longer-lasting in gila monster venom. 

(Yes, a lot of venoms do tend to be targets for pharmaceutical research--there's at least one painkiller in the pipeline (if not already approved) based on a cone-snail neurotoxin.  Mambas have a particularly potent neurotoxin (not quite on the level of, say, Australian elapids but close and quite a bit easier to milk) so it's not a huge shocker that some painkiller based on mamba neurotoxins is in the pipeline.) 

/yeah, have a relative or three on the lizard spit//the stuff does work better than oral hypoglycemics, and Lizard Spit 3.0 only has to be injected once a week--even the older versions of Lizard Spit aren't as bad as insulin or the oral hypoglycemics

Also, as a note on finding neat stuff in venom--part of why they started looking at black mamba venom is because there are ASIC agonists in other venoms (including other elapids like coral snakes) that have the opposite reaction of mambaglins--basically instead of knocking out the ASIC pain receptor they amplified the effects (which is why coral snake bites will have you screaming in pain in disproportionate level to the actual bite--also why stonefish stings are so godawful painful). 

One thing that led to looking at Asian and African elapid and colubrid snake venoms is the fact that Chinese traditional medicine HAS used cobra venom (in non-lethal doses, of course) for pain relief, but cobrotoxin (the major neurotoxin in cobra venom) has the side effect that it's paralytic--mambaglins have the good analgesic effect, but without paralytic effects.  :D (Homeopathy doesn't work for shiate, but sometimes non-homeopathic traditional medicine does give clues to researchers on productive areas to study.) 

And expect a lot more interesting stuff to come out of venom research--we already have ACE inhibitors (an entire class of anti-hypertension drugs that came about via a discovery that bites from the jararaca--a Brazilian species of lancehead--dropped people's blood pressure like a rock), ziconotide (another powerful atypical analgesic coming from research in cone-snail venom--alas, as you basically have to have it injected by an intrathecal pump it's not seen a lot of utility outside of hospice care), the GLP1 agonists (from chemicals in gila monster venom) and now mambaglins...and there are a lot of other venoms being actively researched for Nifty Medical Applications to the point you could say it's a New Research Hotness.  :D

(No, I'm not going to recommend you give a gila monster or a venomous snake a great big hug.  You might thank them, though.  ACE inhibitors in particular have really revolutionised hypertension management, and it's possible a rattlesnake's cousin could have saved many lives.)