Brown recluse bite

The brown recluse spider is rarely an aggressive species, although deaths from brown recluse bite have been documented.

Death from brown recluse bite have only been recorded in children. Brown recluse venom is extremely toxic. Within the Americas there are 20 odd thousand different species of spider and among them there are only 60 that are capable of biting humans.

What is venom?

To break it down, when talking about brown recluse bite, firstly the spiders are not poisonous they are venomous, I have written an article called “Venomous v poisonous” at this link here it is important to fully understand the difference between the meanings of two words when trying to understand brown recluse bite.

When looking at venom’s they are toxic not poisonous and in the case of brown recluse bite, it is much like most other spider venom basically but of course they are all different in the way they attack the body and the reactions and the affects caused by envenomation depending on the species.

Brown recluse venom is highly hemotoxic which means basically a brown recluse bite can potentially destroy the red blood cells, This in turn causes extreme coagulation in their victims blood stream which can cause organ failure.

Venom whether it be in a snake or a spider plays an important role with the various proteins and compounds that make up the venom to aid in digestion, in the case of hemotoxic venom from a brown recluse bite this helps in the aid of digestion. Another way to look at a venom is to just think of it as a highly evolved, highly complex/ modified saliva.

The main function of venom is to- as stated above as in “help and aid in digestion” of a prey item, it has evolved to either kill outright, immobilize, break down tissue and destroy the proteins of the tissue to aid in easier digestion.

See brown recluse bite picture, source.

Dermonecrotic arachnidism and the Brown recluse bite

Dermonecrotic arachnidism or similarly known as necrotising arachnidism is the medical term used to describe necrosis the affects believed to occur in Brown recluse bite.

Necrosis is caused primarily by a lack of blood and or oxygen to the body’s tissue. One common cause of necrosis is gangrene which is mostly caused by damage from the cold, necrosis can affect many parts of the body including the organs, skin and bone. Brown recluse bite is also suspected of causing necrosis, see brown recluse bite pictures above.

Necrosis is basically the death of tissues of the body and cannot be treated, all that can be done is the removal of the dead tissue by a process known as debridement which involves the medical removal of a patient’s dead, dieing, or damaged tissues by way of cutting with surgical instruments such as a scalpel.

Loxoscelism and brown recluse bite

Loxoscelism in brown recluse bite (similar to the above) is the medical term used to describe a condition produced by Brown recluse bite of the genus loxoscelea. There is no real known therapy effective for loxoscelism from Brown recluse bite.

There has been some research on potential antivenoms and vaccines for brown recluse bite. The very first actual documented case of loxoscelism from brown recluse bite in the US occurred in 1879 in the state of Tennessee.

So ….. does a Brown recluse bite cause Dermonecrotic arachnidism or necrotising arachnidism?

This is a hard question to answer as there is so much controversy concerning brown recluse bite, and so many misdiagnosed cases of brown recluse bite, as it seems simple for doctors to just say “yep that’s a brown recluse bite NEXT!!” which goes completely against the meaning of the word “diagnoses” which i find hard to get my head around.

In the case of Brown recluse bite it also goes completely against part of the Hippocratic oath that all doctors take and that is “first do no harm” Improper diagnoses of brown recluse bite in some cases does just that, this can lead to more than harm, as incorrect diagnoses by way of simple “clinical signs” can sometimes be fatal in some individuals, many underlying conditions can have the same symptoms of brown recluse bite.

There is a laboratory procedure to test for the presence of venom from a brown recluse bite, also if the spider was not positively identified of being that of a brown recluse that caused the brown recluse bite and not just someone with no real knowledge on positively identifying the spider such as an Arachnologist.It is important to bear in mind that Brown recluse bite rarely produces pain at the bite site, so a big majority of suspected Brown recluse bite goes un-felt and are only apparent when some sort of  local or systemic symptoms start to appear.

I can relate to this as it has happened to me here in Australia and that not being the case of Brown recluse bite (even though we do have them here) but my bite (if that was in fact what it was) by a White tail spider bite my story of that encounter can be read here

In my case I only guessed it was a White tail spider bite that caused the huge hole in my foot that seemed to take for ever to heal the doctor took a hysto swab prescribed some antibiotics and that was about it yet his initial diagnoses was spider bite I heard nothing more about it including the lab results.

I think that those that fall victim to these types of conditions and have no real concrete evidence the condition was actually caused by spider bite actually get to the point where they convince themselves that it was in fact a brown recluse spider bite or in my case  a white tail spider bite, the reason for this is simply because such a brutal condition (whatever it was) needs some sort of label attached to it.

It is important to note that a scientific study published in 2003 showed that a white tail spider bite produced pain equivalent to that of a bee sting, leaving nothing a red mark, local swelling and itchiness, very occasionally nausea, vomiting, malaise or headache might occur, could this be the same for brown recluse bite?

Also it is interesting to note in the findings, the study of 130 white tailed spider bites found no necrotic ulcers or confirmed infections.

Below “Brown recluse bite on arm” it would be interesting to know if that is actually confirmed? there is no additional information with this video.

So was it actually the result of brown recluse bite or some other underlying condition?

Read more on Brown recluse spider bite here