The Global Burden of Snakebite: A Literature Analysis and Modelling Based on Regional Estimates of Envenoming and Deaths

By A. Kasturiratne, A. Rajitha Wickremasinghe, N. D. de Silva, N. Kithsiri Gunawardena, A. Pathmeswaran, R. Premaratna, L. Savioli, D. Lalloo, H. Janaka de Silva, K. Winkel. PLoS Medicine, 2008

1,861 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background Envenoming resulting from snakebites is an important public health problem in many tropical and subtropical countries. Few attempts have been made to quantify the burden, and recent estimates all suffer from the lack of an objective and reproducible methodology. In an attempt to provide an accurate, up-to-date estimate of the scale of the global problem, we developed a new method to estimate the disease burden due to snakebites. Methods and Findings The global estimates were based on regional estimates that were, in turn, derived from data available for countries within a defined region. Three main strategies were used to obtain primary data: electronic searching for publications on snakebite, extraction of relevant country-specific mortality data from databases maintained by United Nations organizations, and identification of grey literature by discussion with key informants. Countries were grouped into 21 distinct geographic regions that are as epidemiologically homogenous as possible, in line with the Global Burden of Disease 2005 study (Global Burden Project of the World Bank). Incidence rates for envenoming were extracted from publications and used to estimate the number of envenomings for individual countries; if no data were available for a particular country, the lowest incidence rate within a neighbouring country was used. Where death registration data were reliable, reported deaths from snakebite were used; in other countries, deaths were estimated on the basis of observed mortality rates and the at-risk population. We estimate that, globally, at least 421,000 envenomings and 20,000 deaths occur each year due to snakebite. These figures may be as high as 1,841,000 envenomings and 94,000 deaths. Based on the fact that envenoming occurs in about one in every four snakebites, between 1.2 million and 5.5 million snakebites could occur annually. Conclusions Snakebites cause considerable morbidity and mortality worldwide. The highest burden exists in South Asia, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.

Subfields: Genetics, Paleontology, Pharmacology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6e40c225edadeaabe85ad0a12f0d5bcd6798de52

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Citations in the corpus

Evolutionary derived modulations of attention to two common fear stimuli: Serpents and hostile humans (2012, background): “For example, envenoming by snakebites accounts for an estimated worldwide human death rate of close to 100,000/year (Kasturiratne et al., 2008).”
A phylogeny and revised classification of Squamata, including 4161 species of lizards and snakes (2013, background): “Squamates are key study organisms in numerous fields, from evolution, ecology, and behavior [3] to medicine [5,6] and applied physics [7].”
What are the Benefits of Interacting with Nature? (2013, background): “For example, bites from venomous snakes show a very strong bias toward equatorial regions [28], and zoonotic diseases are similarly geographically biased [29], suggesting that some of the more important negative aspects of interacting with nature might be overlooked if the research is biased toward ”
What we fear most: A developmental advantage for threat-relevant stimuli (2013, background): “Further, medical research on snakes has shown that venomous snake bites do constitute a significant number of deaths worldwide (up to 94,000 a year), making snakes still an important threat for humans (Kasturiratne et al., 2008).”
Snakebite Mortality in India: A Nationally Representative Mortality Survey (2011, background): “Snakebites and snakebite fatalities peak during the monsoon season in India [33,36] and worldwide [10], probably reflecting agricultural activity, flooding, increased snake activity, and abundance of their natural prey.”