Saturday, August 13, 2011

Scorpions and experimental methods

Nature.com reports on a small controlled experiment to test the effectiveness of scorpion antivenom.


"In the end, Boyer found just two hospitals in Tucson prepared to participate. Between May 2004 and October 2005, she and her colleagues treated 15 children as part of the trial, mostly under the age of six. Even with the small sample size, the results were striking: symptoms of the scorpion’s neurotoxin resolved within four hours for all eight children receiving Anascorp, whereas only one of seven subjects receiving placebo recovered so quickly. The rest received heavy doses of sedatives and had to stay for longer in intensive care units before it was deemed safe enough to discharge them from the hospitals."


read more at
http://blogs.nature.com/nm/spoonful/2011/08/with_data_from_just_15_people.html