No, please don’t look away—I swear I’m not here to scare you off. This may sound strange at first, and perhaps even counterintuitive to some of you, but scientists do, in fact, look into the reasons why animal bites hurt so much as a basis for treatments such as pain relief. This one adds another to the growing list, and the experts that arrived at this insight sought the help of an unlikely tarantula.
The king baboon spider (Pelinobius muticus) is native to the areas of Tanzania and Kenya, and was first described back in 1885. These spiders can reach 20 cm (7.87 in) in leg span; people are also often warned to keep their distance from this tarantula, as they carry a nasty bite that while nonfatal can leave you itching and in pain for days on end.
And now, their bites may now pave the way for novel pain medication thanks to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To be specific, a team of scientists found a specific peptide within the P. muticus venom called Pm1a that may help manage responses to external stimuli, like pain, through further study.
“In summary, we show here that a single venom peptide can modulate three major determinants of neuronal excitability,” said the researchers in their published paper. To be precise, the Pm1a peptide was isolated from the organic cocktail that was P. muticus’s venom; the research team found this specific peptide to play a role in “hyperexciting” nerve cells through three major channels: sodium (Na), potassium (K), and calcium (Ca).
Permitting nature’s true course, the venom causes P. muticus bite victims to repeatedly feel pain and itching due to its bite; as it turns out, Pm1a is part of the reason why pain neurons keep firing over and over after the tarantula’s bite, causing distinct pain that lasts for days.
The researchers tested their hypothesis by creating a synthetic version of Pm1a, then injecting it into mouse models; with the help of mathematical models, their testing yielded insights into how the venom interacts with nerve cells. As it turns out, this “hyperexcitability” appeared in both tarantula bite victims and people with chronic pain issues, leading the team of experts to believe that further studies into P. muticus venom can lead to future improvements in the field of pain medication.
“The coordinated modulation of excitatory and inhibitory ion channels involved in pain propagation may represent an economical and effective defense strategy in pain-inducing defensive venoms,” the authors continued in their paper.
The team believes that more research is key to revealing even more details about this peculiar connection, adding that “[detailed] studies directed to determine the specific molecular interactions of Pm1a with its many targets may inform the development of pharmacological analogs that could decrease excitability specifically in pain neurons,” the authors told Inverse.
References
- Finol-Urdaneta, R. K., Ziegman, R., Dekan, Z., McArthur, J. R., Heitmann, S., Luna-Ramirez, K., Tae, H.-S., Mueller, A., Starobova, H., Chin, Y. K.-Y., Wingerd, J. S., Undheim, E. A. B., Cristofori-Armstrong, B., Hill, A. P., Herzig, V., King, G. F., Vetter, I., Rash, L. D., Adams, D. J., & Alewood, P. F. (2022). Multitarget nociceptor sensitization by a promiscuous peptide from the venom of the King Baboon spider. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(5). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2110932119
- Nield, D. (2022, January 30). How the venom of the king baboon spider could help us better understand chronic pain. ScienceAlert. https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-figure-out-why-the-king-baboon-spider-s-venom-is-so-incredibly-painful
- Yarlagadda, T. (2021, January 26). An African tarantula’s harsh bite could unlock new pain treatments. Inverse. https://www.inverse.com/science/tarantula-spider-venom-key-to-chronic-pain-treatment
