ABSTRACT
This chapter covers the whole of Asia: limited in the west by the Ural'skiy Khrebet (Russian Federation), Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea and Iran; and in the east and southeast by the Japanese, Philippine and Indonesian islands but excluding Irian Jaya and the islands of eastern Indonesia inhabited by Australasian elapids. Snake venoms contain a large variety of enzymes, non-enzymatic polypeptide toxins, amino acids, biogenic amines, carbohydrates, lipids, nucleosides, nucleotides and metals. The chapter focuses on those constituents of the venoms of Asian snakes which seem to contribute to the clinical manifestations of envenoming in humans. The principal clinical features of envenoming by Asian vipers and pit vipers are haemostatic disturbances, hypotension and local tissue injury. Among indigenous human populations of rural areas of Asia, contact with snakes is likely to be inadvertent except in the case of the relatively few snake catchers and snake charmers and, in China, those who handle snakes for trade and cooking.
