Scorpion anti-venom promises to save hundreds of lives

PHOENIX - Scorpions will sting over 15,000 people this year in the United States, and about half of those will be in Arizona.

Many of those stings won't cause permanent damage. However, there are about 150 to 200 of those stings that will prove deadly, and the most at risk for suffering that fate are infants and others with a weakened immune system.

A new anti-venom called "Anascorp" will change all of that.

"This drug takes a potentially deadly disease and reverses it in less than four hours," said Dr. Leslie Boyer of the Viper Institute at the University of Arizona Medical School in Phoenix. "A child who would have before needed to go to intensive care ends up going home from the emergency room feeling fine on the same day."

Dr. Boyer has spent 12 years developing the drug, which has now been approved by the FDA and is in Valley hospitals. According to her, the anti-venom is nearly 100 percent effective, a rare thing in the medical world.

While this drug is just now being used in the U.S., a similar version of it has seen great success across the border.

"They now use a quarter of a million doses of this drug in Mexico, and their mortality rate has plummeted," said Boyer.

For now, Anascorp is only for emergency use. However, doctors would like to make it in to a mainstream treatment for scorpion stings in the future.

Watch a video about Anascorp on YouTube: