Mintage Journal of Pharmaceutical and Medical Sciences (ISSN: 2320-3315)

Author(s): Satish Bahekar,Ranjana Kale, Shailesh Nagpure

Following snake bite cases, scorpion bite is a common global public health problem including India. Despite various species of scorpions, only few of these can be potentially lethal to humans. In India, the annual number of scorpion stings cases exceeds 1.23 million, of which over 32,250 may be fatal. This can be attributed to various hurdles in the scorpion bite treatment like poor health services, difficult and untimely transportation facilities, wrong traditional beliefs, delay in anti-scorpion venom administration which ultimately leads to substantial amount of mortality and morbidity. Clinical features of the patients stung with scorpion are generally abnormalities indicative of cardiac, respiratory, autonomic and metabolic changes and deaths can be dueto multi-system failure. Administration of anti-scorpion venom serum (AScVs) is the only specific treatment available in India but has many limitations like species specificity, difficulty in availability, affordability andideal storage conditions. The medicinal plants, available locally and used widely by traditional healers, therefore need attention in this aspects. Wide arrays of the plants and theiractive principles have been evaluated for pharmacological properties useful in the treatment of scorpion bite. However, numerous unexplored plants are claimed to have definite role in this issue need to be further studied. This review is an attempt to present a comprehensive account of numerous Indian herbal plants used in the treatment of scorpion bite in any forms like topical application for local pain relief, oral formulation for pain relief and venom neutralization purpose.