Scorpion stings rarely leave a trace, so when 10-year-old Michael Moerdler-Green woke up at 3 am during a recent family trip to Phoenix, Arizona, all he knew was that his leg hurt. But as the scorpion's poison began to spread, his body started to tingle, his eyes rolled around in his head and his legs and arms began to flail.
At the emergency room of Phoenix Children's Hospital, doctors offered Michael's parents a choice of treatments: heavy sedation to quell the boy's symptoms, or an experimental anti-venom made in Mexico but not approved for use in the US. The boy's father, Dr. David Moerdler-Green, chose the anti-venom. A new study suggests he made the right decission.
No other anti-venom specifically for scorpion stings is available in the United States, and a small clinical trial of young chlidren stung by bark scorpions has found that most of those given the investigational drug recovered within two hours, while children given a placebo had symptoms that lasted four hours or more and required heavy sedation and hospitalization.