Coronary vasospasm as the primary cause of death due to the venom of the burrowing asp, Atractaspis engaddensis

Non-enzymatic proteins from snake venoms: A gold mine of pharmacological tools and drug leads

“…Through a series of papers, including the one featured here, Elazar Kochva and colleagues examined the venom of one species of stiletto snake, Atractaspis engaddensis (Kochva et al, 1982;Weiser et al, 1984;Lee et al, 1986;Takasaki et al, 1988). This species had been known to cause human fatalities, and the sequelae of symptoms indicated the presence of a strong neurotoxin.…”

“…These toxins, termed sarafotoxins ( Fig. 3A, for example), were shown to act by affecting the heart through strong vasoconstriction of coronary blood vessels, leading ultimately to cardiac arrest (Weiser et al, 1984;Lee et al, 1986). Several isoforms of the sarafotoxins were later identified using venom pooled from many different individual animals (Takasaki et al, 1988).…”

Role of extracellular and intracellular sources of Ca2+ in sarafotoxin S6b‐induced contraction of strips of the rat aorta

“…In the present study, we used front-surface fluorometry of fura-2 loaded rat aortic strips to examine the roles of extracellular and intracellular Ca2" and of the [Ca2+]J-force relationship in contractions induced by sarafotoxin. Since sarafotoxin and endothelin-l have homologous amino acid sequences (Lee & Chiappinelli, 1988), share common binding sites (Ambar et al, 1989), and induce marked long-lasting coronary vasospasms (Lee et al, 1986;Takasaki et al, 1988b), it was considered that elucidation of the mechanisms involved in sarafotoxin-induced contraction would shed light on the mechanisms of the vasospastic actions of peptides from the endothelin and sarafotoxin families. In the presence of extracellular Ca2 , sarafotoxin induced a rapid increase in [Ca2+], followed by a sustained phase.…”

“…Its peptide sequence is homologous to that of endothelin-l and consists of 21 amino acids including four cysteines in identical positions in both peptides (Lee & Chiappinelli, 1988;Takasaki et al, 1988b). Sarafotoxin causes cardiac arrest in mice, probably due to coronary vasoconstriction (Lee et al, 1986;Takasaki et al, 1988a). It has been reported that sarafotoxin specifically inhibits binding of endothelin-1 to membranes prepared from rat brain and atria (Ambar et al, 1989) and cultured rat vascular smooth muscle cells (Hirata et al, 1989).…”

Structure‐activity relationship in vasoconstrictor effects of sarafotoxins andendothelin‐1

“…Sarafotoxin S6a (SRTa), sarafotoxin S6b (SRTb) and sarafotoxin S6c (SRTc) are new cardiotoxic isotoxins isolated from the venom of the burrowing asp Atructaspis engaddensis [ 1,2]. It has been reported that SRTb provides powerful coronary vasoconstriction, positive inotropic effect and severe atrioventricular block in mice, rats and humans [3].…”