The Egg Antidote to Cobra Venom

Eggs are good for health in not just the way you imagine. A study by three Indian scientists has shown that anti-venom for snake bites can be made from egg yolk.

Eggs are good for health in not just the way you imagine. A study by three Indian scientists has shown that anti-venom for snake bites can be made from egg yolk. To start off, they injected white leghorn hens with mild doses of snake venom, creating antibodies in them. The premise was that when these hens laid eggs, the antibodies would be transferred into them. The scientists collected the eggs and from the yolk separated the antibodies and tested them on mice and guinea pigs. Successfully. The scientists—R Rajendra Prasad, Nalini Ramamurthy and A Mathiyalagan—who published their paper in the latest issue of journal Current Science, say this method is more economical and has less side effects than the existing process of making anti-venom from horses. They say, “Twenty-two chickens can produce as much immunoglobulin as a horse can yield per year.”

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