“A pill used to combat mercury and arsenic poisoning could be repurposed to tackle snakebites, trials have found…

Developed and approved as a treatment for heavy metal poisoning, [unithiol] first became available in 1958, in what was then the Soviet Union. It was later approved in Western Europe in the 1970s.

The drug works as a ‘chelating agent’ – it acts almost as a ‘metal magnet’, pulling in toxic heavy metals and then facilitating their exit from a person’s body.

Snake venom contains hundreds of different toxins, but some of them – called metalloproteinases – are zinc-based, meaning unithiol can also be used to attract, inhibit and then extract the dangerous toxins.

This will be especially useful to tackle viper bites. If untreated, the metalloproteinases in these snakes cause severe tissue damage and life-threatening bleeding.”

From Telegraph.