The venom from a scorpion sting acts as a nerve poison in the most serious of cases.

Some of the reactions to the very painful stings from venomous scorpions, include slurred speech, trouble swallowing, abnormal eye movements, muscle twitching, trouble walking, and unco-ordinated muscle movements. Stings if left untreated can be fatal.

The venom in the most common victims of scorpion bites causes serious reactions, with the entire bodies of the children jerking and twitching, eyes to roll around in their head, shortness of breath, fluid in the lungs, labored breathing, excess saliva, and blurred vision.

But, that was in the past, as the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has given its approval to an anti-venom injection for treating scorpion stings, manufactured in Mexico.

Leslie Boyer, Director, Venom Immuno-chemistry, Pharmacology and Emergency Response Institute at the University of Arizona in Tucson, called the move an historic one.

The majority of scorpion stings in USA take place in Arizona that accounts for 8,000 to 12,000 of them, every year, including in Southern Nevada and western New Mexico, where they are so rampant, with the country seeing a 1, 000 times more stings than USA.

Clinical trials of the drug known as Anascorp were carried out on 2,000 people at 26 Arizona hospitals in Arizona and one in Las Vegas, with dramatic results. The children’s symptoms disappeared within hours.
Without the anti-venom, if a child was bitten and began experiencing extreme symptoms, it would be necessary to place him / her in Intensive Care, under heavy sedation and put on a breathing tube.

Anascorp, manufactured from the plasma of horses immunized against scorpion venom, is the first specific treatment for counteracting the sometimes dangerous, even fatal effects of stings by venomous centruroides scorpions.

However, FDA says, it can also cause early or delayed allergic reactions in people sensitive to horse proteins.