I was wondering if some of the things that people have done to "treat" bites are actually helpful or not, like with the example in the original post.
I don't plan on getting bitten any time soon. A 1.5 inch P. metallica sling just came into my possession, so I figured it would be a good time to ask about information regarding bite treatment (before would have been better, but this purchase wasn't exactly planned). I'm not worried about getting bitten, but the risk is always present, no matter how small, so I figured it would be good information to know.
I don't like chocolate.
Well you could also check the bite report section here on the forums.
I did. Somebody who did get bit tied off the finger that was bit and ran it under hot water, and from the sound of the report, by the next day their symptoms had disappeared. I made this thread partly because of reading that. Was it that treatment that may have spared them several days of the venom's effects, or was it probably wasted effort?
I checked and read up back when I got my first T as a gift on the bee/wasp venom. The protein in bee and wasp venom is totally different from spider venom from what I read and was told by folks here
Which is a good thing because I wouldn't have gotten into the hobby otherwise!
It would have had no effect at all, if they had not tied off the finger the symptoms still would have been gone by tomorrow. Running it under hot water probably helped a little but again, in the long run you can't really do anything except wait it out.
If it weren't a big deal, they wouldn't be called 'medically significant'. Though, in the grand scheme of things, what doesn't kill you may make you tougher.
What's the point of tying off the finger? The finger needs blood flow or you create a new set of problems; you can't leave a tourniquet on for long. Tourniquets slow the spread of venom, buying time until antivenin arrives, which doesn't exist for tarantulas (and if it did, it wouldn't be available in the US). You can't stop venom from spreading once it's been injected, it goes throughout the body regardless, so what is accomplished if you could slow it down? Help is not on the way. The 'symptoms' in this dramatic event disappeared on their own, the 'treatment' was symbolic but pointless, if anything worsened by what the victim did.
And, thanks for the good words, both you and the others.
Here are a few weird things about tarantulas (big surprise, no?), probably other spiders as well. If you go to the PubMed website and type in the key words spider allergy, you'll get something like six pages (about 114 hits) of scientific articles. I couldn't find any articles in that listing of medical literature about an allergic reaction to spider VENOM, but there were at least two articles reporting the deaths of two people who reacted badly to widow ANTIVENIN and one or more reporting allergic reactions to urticating bristles! (But, I must admit my eyes were beginning to blur a bit by the end of the first page! I may have missed something.)
+1. Spiders are so strange in so many of their adaptations and behaviors, as your excellent book goes into detail on. Using pedipapls to mate with? Sperm webs? Liquifying food before swallowing it? Silk? The list goes on. God only knows how all of these things evolved. Sure makes them interesting though.
Stan is absolutely right on all accounts, particularly the case of death. One of the concerns with antivenom is whether the person have a reaction because the antibodies (proteins) which bind to the toxin proteins or peptides are in made in horses. It's long known that equine antibodies may cause issues in a human receiving the therapy that could lead to more serious symptoms and results (eg death if untreated) than venom itself. It's because of this that currently there are clinical trials underway, with some sites in California, testing a new antivenom made in sheep. For some reason, humans don't react the same way to sheep antibodies as they do from horse antibodies.