Now researchers think that desperately ill heart failure patients may find relief with the help of the eastern green mamba snake.
That's the hope, at least, of John Burnett, a heart failure expert at Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. He and his colleagues have fashioned an experimental drug based in part on the venom of the snake, a tree-dwelling relative of the cobra that is found in eastern Africa.
The drug is designed to help solve a vexing medical dilemma in treating patients with acute heart failure: how to provide effective relief to the heart without hurting the kidneys. A 40-patient midstage, or phase 2, clinical trial of the drug, called CD-NP, is currently enrolling patients to get an initial read on the compound's safety and ability to relieve symptoms in heart failure patients. Plenty of work remains to determine if the drug is effective and whether it will make it to the market.
Click to expand...