Anyone out there know what the medical use of Horseshoe crab blood is? I’m
sure that somewhere I read about it being something useful?
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A cell in the blood of the horshoe crab, Genus Limulus, is lysed (broken down)
and the resulting fluid is used to detect the presence of endotoxin.
Endotoxin is a component of the cell walls of many bacteria and is quit toxic
if present in medicines and other injectibles. They used to have to test
for endotoxin by injecting the material into a rabbit and waiting for the
rabbit to develop a fever. This was expensive and time consuming. The new
test, the Limulus test, can be done in a matter of minutes, and is much
cheaper.
Woods Hole was a drop off/ pick up point for the crabs and may still be.
The crabs were drained of some of their blood and returned to the fishermen
who returned them to the waters from whence they came (alive) so they would
be used again without needlessly killing them.
edb
In article <7621.28094…@stjhmc.fidonet.org> William.Eskd…@f1000.n261.z1.fidonet.org (William Eskdale) writes:
>Anyone out there know what the medical use of Horseshoe crab blood is? I’m
>sure that somewhere I read about it being something useful?
They have a different type of blood, not hemoglobin (some strange metal,
cobalt maybe?) bound in it. I don’t think it has much medical use, but it is
scientifically interesting to biochemists, so they use a lot of
the little suckers.