Review of the Mechanisms of Snake Venom Induced Pain: It's All about Location, Location, Location

Pain-acute, chronic and debilitating-is the most feared neurotoxicity resulting from a survivable venomous snake bite. The purpose of this review is to present in a novel paradigm what we know about the molecular mechanisms responsible for pain after envenomation. Progressing from known pain modulating peptides and enzymes, to tissue level interactions with venom resulting in pain, to organ system level pain syndromes, to geographical level distribution of pain syndromes, the present work demonstrates that understanding the mechanisms responsible for pain is dependent on location, location, location. It is our hope that this work can serve to inspire the molecular and epidemiologic investigations needed to better understand the neurotoxic mechanisms responsible for these snake venom mediated diverse pain syndromes and ultimately lead to agent specific treatments beyond anti-venom alone.

Automated summary

This review presents the latest findings on the molecular mechanisms responsible for pain after envenomation. It highlights the importance of understanding the location-dependent nature of pain and calls for further molecular and epidemiologic investigations to develop targeted treatments.