Development of chicken egg yolk antibodies (IgY) against venom of cobra (Naja naja) and krait (Bungarus caeruleus) and a study on its neutralization potential

Abstract

The Big Four snakes are the leading causes of snakebite mortality in India. Among them, The Indian spectacled cobra (Naja naja) and common krait (Bungarus caeruleus) contribute about one-third of the deaths. The conventional anti-snake venoms (ASV) produced from equine serum are found to be expensive, with a high frequency of clinical side effects, low specificity, and production drawbacks. The current study, therefore, attempted to develop chicken egg yolk immunoglobulins (IgY) as antivenoms against the venoms of cobra and krait venoms. The major pathophysiological properties of the venoms and the efficacy of monovalent ASV IgY were evaluated. The titer of anti-cobra and anti-krait IgY was found to be 1:64000 on the 145th day post-immunization. The results showed that venoms (lethal doses (LD₅₀): cobra:0.375 mg/kg, krait:0.0375 mg/kg of mice) had hemolytic, pro-coagulant, inflammatory, hemorrhagic, and edematic activities that were effectively neutralized by ASV-IgY. 1 mL of monovalent ASV IgY was able to neutralize 0.22 mg of cobra venom and 0.028 mg of krait venom whereas 1 mL of commercial polyvalent antivenom was able to neutralize 0.28 mg of cobra venom and 0.035 mg of krait venom. The study results suggest that using chicken IgY as an monovalent antivenom could effectively treat snakebites.

Keywords:

• Chicken-sourced IgY
• neurotoxic venoms
• lethality
• neutralization potency
• antivenom

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Professor Uma Maheswari Krishnan, Dean, SASHE, SASTRA Deemed-to-be-University for her guidance and unconditional support. The authors express their gratitude to the Central Animal Facility, for their support to conduct the in-vivo experiments and Mr. Srichandrasekar T.I., Project Assistant, DST-SERB-ECR Project for his unconditional support in maintenance of the poultry shed. Irula’ s Snake Catchers Cooperative society has been the source of venoms used in this study. The authors extend our sincere gratitude to the Management of SASTRA Deemed-to-be- University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, India for their financial support and PSG College of Arts & Science, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India for research collaboration and infrastructure support.

Author contributions

Gayathri Gopal: performed all the experiments, provided the scientific literature data, and drafted the main manuscript, Antonysamy Michael: contributed to developing the concept of the study and analysis of data, Senthil Visaga Ambi & Diraviyam Thirumalai: designed and directed the entire study, as well as the overall editing and approval of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article [and/or] its supplementary materials

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by DBT-BIRAC under PACE-AIR Scheme (BT/AIR0342/PACE-13/17). Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has provided Senior Research Fellowship (09/1095(0062)/2020-EMR-I) to the first author for conducting her research.