Accidental Blockbusters: Warfarin
“Of course, that’s how life is. A turn of events may seem very small at
the time it’s happening, but you never really know, do you?” Tom Xavier
Warfarin is an anticoagulant
currently prescribed to prevent blood clots. However it was originally
introduced to the consumer world as a rat poison due to its haemorrhaging
abilities.
In the early 1920’s a bizarre number
of cattle in the US kept spontaneously bleeding profusely. Food sources in the
area were scarce and so the cattle were being left to eat the damp, mouldy hay
that was no good to anyone else. A Canadian vet twigged that the link between all
of these haemorrhaging cattle was that they had consumed this unsuitable hay,
and discovered that by removing the hay from the cattle’s diet, they returned
to full health.
Thirty years later, the compound
in the mouldy hay was finally characterised and was launched into the US market
as a rat poison, proving an instant success. However a US soldier,
unsuccessfully, tried to commit suicide by overdosing on this new toxin. Having
been rushed to hospital, he was treated with vitamin K, the antidote, and made
a full recovery, yet this started an investigation into the potential therapeutic
use of the poison. And three years later, it was approved for use as an
anticoagulant, with one of its first recipients being the US president at the
time; Dwight D. Eisenhower.
One conspiracy theory, highlighting
the dangers of warfarin and the complexity of its dosing regimen, suggests that
Stalin was murdered using warfarin. As warfarin is tasteless and odourless, making
it such a good rat poison, Stalin could have easily consumed it without knowing
so, and he exhibited many of the symptoms commonly found in a warfarin overdose
when he died.
This post was written by Graduate Research Exec Becky Geffen.
For more weird and wonderful pharamcetuical facts follow us on: @brandingscience
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