Do you ever wonder how the different anti-toxin drugs are sold in the market? Before they hit the drugstores, administered to you during emergencies, and prescribed by your doctors, they undergo multiple tests first, not only for their effectiveness but also for any possible presence of contamination. During this process, manufacturing and testing companies use a special kind of crab.
The horseshoe crab can be easily detected by their shape, which looked like helmets. They live in the shallower parts of the water. Their appearance, nevertheless, is the least of the concerns of health experts: what they require is the crabs' blue blood.
The blue blood, which is actually made up of ameboycte cells enriched with copper (hence the color), is the reason these crabs survive their environment. In order to greatly reduce their exposure to different harmful bacteria, the cells detect the foreign invader. Then they tend to create a "seal" to prevent it from spreading.
The blood is highly sensitive to toxins and bacteria that may cause meningitis, typhoid, infection after surgery, and contamination of medical equipment. In less than an hour, it can already detect toxins from gram-negative organisms. In fact, it's so sensitive that false positives are not considered a major concern. Further, the Food and Drug Administration requires manufacturers to test equipment including pacemakers and intravenous medications for contamination by letting them pass through the blue blood.
The crab is also helping other types of research such as finding more efficient cancer treatments and fungal infection tests.
However, before health experts find more ways to maximize the crab's capabilities-or at least their blue blood-they may have to learn how to control the dwindling population first. Over the last 15 years, the supply of the horseshoe crab has significantly decreased to at least 75%, especially in the Delaware Bay where they are more abundant. They are usually harvested by the hundred thousand during their mating season in spring. Further, as many as 30% of these harvested crabs die, and many of those returned to the shallow waters are no longer capable of reproducing.