Pain killer in dart frogs?

1665 Views 6 Replies 2 Participants Last post by Guest, Nov 22, 2004

Discussion Starter · Nov 22, 2004

I was reading about frogs today and came accross this page that claimed that a doctor in chicago had found some way to extract something from a E. tricolor that was 200 times more powerful than morphine.

Here is the quote.

There has been a new discovery involving the Poison arrow frog, Epipedrobates tricolor from Ecuador. Researchers from Abbott Labs in Chicago have developed a new pain killer called ABT-594. John Daly from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases found that an extract from the frog's skin could block pain 200 times more effectively than morphine. Mr. Daly calls the compound "epibatidine" in honor of the frog. Further studies have been done and this drug appears to have none of the serious side effects which are associated with morphine. Morphine can also suppress breathing and stop the digestive movement in the intestines and the bowel. Current tests show that ABT-594 does not hinder respiration, diminish digestive movement or show signs of addiction.

The page its on is the Pueblo Zoo kids page, but this was interesting.

http://www.pueblozoo.org/archives/apr00/feature.htm

What do you think about this? The only other thing I noticed was the copyright of 2000, so it is seemingly old news. Is there anything new on this?

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markpulawski

· #5 · Nov 22, 2004

Frog Pain Killer

I believe right after this there was several attempts to produce toxins in CB born frogs, I do not believe these attempts were successful. I also seem to remember that they would have needed thousands of wild caught Tricolors just for the study. I may be off base as my memory of some of these things is not quite what it was.
Mark

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