Nerve Agent Pretreatment

Nerve Agent Pretreatment – General Information

The Nerve Agent Pretreatment is a disease which has had a governing part since World War II. This name appeared because of the fact that it affects the transmittance of the nerve impulses to the neural system. Chemically, all nerve agents are included in the grouping of organo-phosphorus substances. They are easily dispersed but stable, highly toxic and they have fast consequences when assimilated via respiration. They can be easily fabricated as the natural materials are readily accessible and inexpensive. In the late 1940’s the German doctors noticed that the organo-phosphorus substances were poisonous and a few years later they managed to create in the laboratories an artificial compound with extremely high toxicity. This was the first nerve agent artificially created by humans; it was called tabun and, during the next years, it was produced in large quantities; at the same time two more compounds were created. After the war, scientists studied especially the mechanism of these substances in order to discover efficient ways of protection. These efforts made the Nerve Agent Pretreatment easier to treat and they provided the information needed to discover new kinds of agents. A feature of Nerve Agent Pretreatment is that it is extremely toxic and it develops quickly. The agent, an aerosol, a gas or a liquid gets into the body covering or it can be assimilated when eating certain poisoned food or drinking poisoned water. Poisoning is long-acting if the agent is assimilated through the tegument.   

Nerve Agent Pretreatment – Symptoms

The way in which the agent enters the body is extremely important for the time needed to start causing issues. Usually, poisoning is faster when you assimilate the agent via respiration because it takes short for the agent to spread into the blood and then to hit the target body parts. The Nerve Agent Pretreatment firstly attacks the respiratory system and, in this case, death can occur in just a few seconds. Yet, usually a few moments have to pass before the symptoms develop but, in about 25- 40 minutes the agent will affect the normal activity of some enzymes in the nervous system. When you come in contact with a small dose of agent you will experience only a few minor symptoms like a running nose, an enlarged production of saliva and a sensation of pressure on the chest. The pupil of the optic receptor gets contracted and that damages the night-vision; in addition, the accommodation capability of the visual preceptor is decreased, the short-reach vision worsens and the sufferer experiences pain whenever trying to focus on a particular object. You will also get headaches, hallucinations, tiredness and nausea. When you are exposed to a higher dosage, the Nerve Agent Pretreatment has a more spectacular development and you will experience more pronounced symptoms. These may consist of trouble in breathing, gastrointestinal discomfort, powerful secretion of saliva, sweating, muscular weakness, convulsions and even muscular paralyses. This last symptom also affects the respiratory muscles and this can lead to suffocation.

Nerve Agent Pretreatment – Treatment

These agents have an exceedingly fast effect so if you want the medical manners of treatment to have any effects you must use them as quickly as possible. In some areas, the military forces are instated with an auto-injector which carries antidotes and which is easy to use. You can easily inject yourself or other individual.  Nerve Agent Pretreatment is less or more uncomplicated to handle as the agents are resistant to most of the enzymes used nowadays. One of these is oxime which proves useful in certain circumstances and the other one, the active constituent, is atropine. This is the standard antidote for Nerve Agent Pretreatment but it only improves the symptoms, it does not fight the cause of the disease. Atropine connects with the receptors for acetylcholine and, when this happens, it offers shelter against the surplus of acetylcholine. On the other hand, atropine is effective within some particular parts of the nervous system. We know two kinds of acetylcholine sensory receptors, the muscarinic, which is detected in the glands, muscles and the nervous system and the nicotinic, which is detected in the skeletal muscles. Atropine obstructs the muscarinic sense organs so oxime and atropine can be conceived as complementary. In order to treat the Nerve Agent Pretreatment and if the victim’s situation does not improve after using oxime and atropine the doctors can use an extra auto-injection with a drug named diazepam which should stop the convulsions. The level of acetylcholine is repaired step by step by the body production but this may last for a couple of weeks. During this amount of time the sufferer may need medical attention for problems like trouble in sleeping, trouble in concentrating, amnesia, anxiety or even muscular impotence. Psychical problems may also appear after extended exposure to low measures of nerve agents.

If you want to protect yourself against Nerve Agent Pretreatment you can preventively take some medical antidotes in small doses; their effects are restricted though to the peripheral nervous system. These drugs do not induce any side effects and they protect the organism from the toxic action of all the agents.
Another method to protect yourself is to take diazepam tablets as this drug affects firstly the centric nervous system. This drug fortifies the validity of the other agents and it provides better chances of survival and less trauma. Pretreatment is effective if a warning arrangement is operative as the drugs require about 35 minutes after being consumed in order to have an effect. The next two hours offer the best protection and then the results decrease. The tablets can be taken at intervals of eight or nine hours but you should stop the administration if any nerve agent harm has happened.
In the last few years, scientists tried to treat this disease using the naturally macromolecules in the body. These could provide enough protection and minimum side-effects. This way, the Nerve Agent Pretreatment will become easier to treat and especially, easier to prevent. Another strategy for protecting the body against this disorder is to product mono-organism antibodies with great resemblance for the agents.