Health

Snake Venom Against Wrinkles!

The neurotoxic effect

By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

14th of February 2008, 09:06 GMT

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Juvenile temple viper (Tropidolaemus wagneri) from Philippines

The snake venom varies significantly between different groups of serpents. Some venoms are hemolytic: they predigest the prey, acting like a powerful digesting juice, producing tissue degradation, necrosis and hemorrhage. These bites are extremely painful. Most vipers possess a powerful venom of this type and with their huge fangs can introduce large amounts of venom into the wounds. Sea snake venom provokes elimination of mioglobin (muscle protein) through the kidney and necrosis into the muscles, but these snakes are not known to have ever bitten a person.

Other venoms are neurotoxic and paralyze the muscles. The

victim dies of suffocation and heart attack. This bite does not induce pain. All cobras and cobra-related snakes have extremely potent neurotoxic venom, but also some rattlesnakes, moccasins and pitless vipers. Some venoms, like cobra's, produce anaphylactic shock.

Now, this neuorotoxic venom of the snakes has been used for creating a face cream that smooths out wrinkles by paralyzing the facial muscles. The Defy Time cream is based on the venom from the temple viper (Tropidolaemus wagneri, a pit viper related to rattlesnakes from southeastern Asia), freezing facial muscles.

Botox works on the same principle, using the boutlinum neurotoxin produced by the bacterium Clostridium botulinum. But unlike Botox, the snake venom does not have to be injected, but applied in the morning and night. The cream is less invasive than Botox - recently connected by a study to deadly cases.

The Synake synthetic venom is already popular in the U.S., Gwyneth Paltrow and Ben Kingsley being amongst its users.
"I am not sure I would have bought it if I had just seen it on the shelf. It was a strange sensation and left my skin tingling - but I have never tried anything like it. The difference was remarkable within a short space of time," Belinda Murray, 48, a therapist from London, told Daily Mail.

Others are more skeptical.

"The use of synthetic venom in cosmetics needs more exploration in my opinion," Harley Street cosmetic surgeon, Apostolos Gaitanis, told Daily Mail.

TAGS:

snake | skin | venom

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