Will gel made from spider venom compete with Viagra?

A bite from the eight-legged animals can cause severe pain and dangerously high blood pressure in humans and, in the worst cases, lead to death. In men, the animal’s venom can also cause so-called priapism, a painful erection that lasts for many hours and which – if left untreated – can lead to impotence.

Competition for the potency pill Viagra?
The fact that the poison can cause an erection makes it interesting for medicine. Researchers in Brazil are already working on a drug based on the poison, which they believe could become a competitor to the well-known potency pill Viagra, which is prescribed to treat so-called erectile dysfunction.

“More than thirty years ago, scientist Carlos Ribeiro Diniz founded a research group to isolate the components of spider venom. How is that possible? Because he noticed that patients who came to the clinic with a spider bite suffered from a painful, permanent erection,” says researcher Marcia Helena Borges, researcher at the Ezequiel Dias Foundation (FUNED) in Belo Horizonte.

A Brazilian pharmaceutical company has already patented the molecule isolated from the venom of the banana spider that is responsible for the potency-enhancing effect. The scientists say the first clinical tests are promising.

“Much fewer side effects”
“The advantage of our medicine is that it is not a pill, but a gel that is applied locally. This is an advantage because there are far fewer side effects. It’s just a cream that you apply. “That’s the difference from the other drugs used to treat erectile dysfunction,” says Maria Elena de Lima, who conducts research at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in the state of the same name in southeastern Brazil.

As recently as August, a supermarket in Krems an der Donau, Lower Austria, had to be closed because a poisonous banana spider was spotted. Despite an extensive search, the eight-legged animal could not be found.