Snake envenoming causes several potentially lethal pathologies. The specific pathology is dictated by the toxin composition of
venom, which varies by species, geography and ontogeny. This variation severely restricts the paraspecific efficacy of
antivenoms used to treat
snakebite victims. With a view to devising pathology-specific
snakebite treatments, we assessed the procoagulant activity of 57
snake venoms and investigated the efficacy of various
antivenoms. We find that procoagulant
venoms act differentially on key steps of the coagulation cascade, and that certain monospecific
antivenoms work in a previously unrecognised paraspecific manner to neutralise this activity, despite conventional assumptions of congener-restricted efficacy. Moreover, we demonstrate that the
metal chelator EDTA is also capable of neutralising
venom-induced lethality in vivo. This study illustrates the exciting potential of developing new, broad-spectrum, toxin-targeting
antivenoms capable of treating key
snakebite pathologies, and advocates a thorough re-examination of
enzyme inhibiting compounds as
alternative therapies for treating
snakebite victims.