Talk:Kambo (drug)

On the second paper, yellow bile being vomited is not evidence of a beneficial effect; it itself,

bile reflux is harmful (though as a one-off, it seems the harm is mild). I'm not sure if the quotes around 'cleansing the liver' are scare quotes. I find this paper rather unclearly-phrased, and I'm not quite sure why they raised the bile-vomiting or what they are trying to say about it other than relating it to the expected effects of caerulein (in which I suspect they are following the 1996 paper). Are they claiming something related to the enterohepatic circulation

? If they presented evidence, this would be obvious. 'Cleansing the liver' is clearly the sort of statement we need a good MEDRS source for, precisely because of this sort of muddle.

Both of you are right; the latter two journals are not

WP:RS, let alone MEDRS; we can't use these no matter what they say. I shouldn't really spend my time evaluating the quality of the papers, I am not reviewing them for acceptance in a journal! HLHJ (talk) 21:43, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply

]

talk) 00:36, 17 February 2020 (UTC)[reply

]

Perhaps somebody with a better knowledge of the literature can salvage these? --Gronk Oz (talk) 03:11, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello WP editors - hope I'm not ruffling any feathers by inserting this as a new section or in the wrong place.

I understand there's a lot of pre-conclusions and temptation to write-off health-related things outside the clinical sphere such as this - particularly something that at first glance seems as wild and unbelievable as kambo does - but in coming back to view this article and see how it's evolved I'm left wondering if there isn't still a degree of prejudice (perhaps 'unfairness' is a better word) coloring this article unfairly.

Just a few notes about my thoughts here:

The effects on humans usually include tachycardia, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea (good - this is true but it's not 'usual', it's essentially guaranteed, that's how the peptides work - except for diarrhea which is case-by-case)...and can lead to kidney, pancreas and liver damage, seizures and death (I won't argue, but it is worth stating that these are hardly common and the certainly not the usual outcome; there's only one known report of liver damage that I'm aware of - this one: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5497453/ , and less than 10 deaths that anyone can seem to find - out of hundreds of sessions taking place around the world each week. Regarding the claims of liver toxicity - it seems everyone just keeps referring back to this one case report and then making sweeping claims about it, for example).

There is no scientific evidence that it is an effective treatment. (I disagree, but I can accept that WP likely has a higher standard for what is considered an "effective treatment")

There is currently no scientific basis to these claims. (I have an inkling of WP's stance on MEDRS, but this sentence seems far too short given the plethora of research around the topic. A quick look at this Talk page shows a number of links have been posted showing some research and there's much more out there - but this sentence makes it sound as if there is absolutely zero substance *whatsoever*, not just clinically-proven research. I could be barking up the wrong tree here, but amongst the wealth of research out there, some of it is in-vivo such as this: https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/1fd349a9-6ac4-3441-9ed5-6ab8d58e816c/ or this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447859/ and I would've thought that in the interests of balance, that kind of thing would at least bear mention instead of how the sentence stands at present - i.e. a complete shutdown and negation of any possible scientific basis)

There is no solid medical evidence on how the frog toxins work, whether they are useful for treating anything, and whether they can be used safely: no clinical trials have tested them on humans, as of November 2019. (I think it's at least good that this has been contextualized with a colon and the follow-on sentence about no clinical trials. Having said that, again, I have the same serious qualm as I've written just above this - while the research may not meet the high WP standards, the delivery of this sentence almost entirely shuts down the notion completely, despite the foundational research that exists. Again, apologies if I'm wholly misunderstanding WP MEDRS policy, but the delivery of the sentence just seems very one-sided).

Reports of adverse events are numerous, including for use with experienced guidance. (I think this is an example of sentence that's a bit strange - what is being defined by adverse events here? The results such as tachycardia, nausea, vomiting etc - are essentially guaranteed based on how the peptides work. These are intrinsic and wholly inseparable elements of using kambo. Anybody doing kambo will have these types of things, unless 'adverse events' refers to something else here. Essentially what i'm saying is that this sentence makes it sound like there are *other* kinds of events beyond what science and common-usage has shown so far. It's kind of like saying that reports of adverse events from hangovers are numerous).

On the "detox" nature - while I agree the general notion of a 'detox' has been carried away by pseudo-wellness charlatans over the years, should there not be some consideration given to the physical action of kambo on the liver insofar as it literally "squeezes" the bile etc out (from the smooth-muscle contractions of some of these peptides) which is then vomited up? I'm not saying here that this necessarily makes it a sound detox option for the average user - just that its mechanisms are different to the usual cadre of "detox" options.

Pharmacology section: I think it's a tiny but respectable step forward that this has been added since I last checked this page - even if it should be much longer and even if it pales in comparison to the 'slant' presented in the rest of the article. Good work WP editors, this is a nice addition and helps flesh it out a little. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ablations (talk • contribs) 04:10, 26 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You are unlikely to ever ruffle feathers by starting a section on a talk page,

WP:Med; there will always be people there. Or ask in the WP:Teahouse

, for non-medical stuff, or just add {{help me}} to your talk page post.

You say "I understand there's a lot of pre-conclusions and temptation to write-off health-related things outside the clinical sphere". I'm afraid it's the other way around; Wikipedia policy is to write off health-related treatments until and unless there is solid clinical trial evidence. It's the only way to ensure we don't present unreliable information.

Wikipedia policy is that only medrs evidence constitutes evidence for a medical claim. If the research doesn't meet our standards, we ignore it, because a lot of the research that doesn't meet our standards is contradictory, misleading, or plain wrong. If we let people edit in weak, indirect, suggestive evidence, based on their own interpretations, we'd have a mass of contradictory speculation and a lot of arguement, plus we'd be wrong a lot of the time, which in medicine is serious and can kill people.

I'm glad you like the content specifying what sort of evidence there wasn't. There is really no way that trials on cells in a dish and mice can be made to count as scientific evidence that kambo purges, or any treatments, are good for humans. Things can work well in dishes and in mice but are useless, harmful, or even lethal, in humans; sadly, it has happened. I'm afraid you are wholly misunderstanding WP MEDRS policy, and I'm sorry it's been seven months before you got a reply to your queries.

"You write 'There is no scientific evidence that it is an effective treatment. (I disagree, but I can accept that WP likely has a higher standard for what is considered an "effective treatment")'. Almost. Wikipedia has a higher standard for what is considered scientific evidence. That standard was developed by a lot of medical editors, many of them doctors, over many years. If you can come up with a good arguement for changing it, we'll change it, but probably you'll need to study and use it some more first; an inkling is not really likely to be enough!

The serious negative effects from kambo may be rare, and the milder, expected ones worth it for the positive effects. But we don't yet have enough medical evidence to be sure, so we can't say so on Wikipedia. As I recall there's only one well-documented case of liver failure, but more of biochemical markers of liver harm. I'm not sure

bile reflux

(which must have happened if someone is vomiting bile) is good for the liver, either, but I really don't know.

You write "I'm not saying here that this necessarily makes it a sound detox option for the average user - just that its mechanisms are different to the usual cadre of "detox" options"." The article documents that "detoxing" in this sense is a pseudoscientific notion; there's some more on this at this link, tho it's not medrs. It also implies that "detoxing" by vomiting is nothing unusual, and bile reflux I think occurs with really intense vomiting, so I'm not convinced that part of the mechanism is unusual. The fact that it initially makes you feel awful, then, much later, good, is pretty unusual for a recreational drug; most do the reverse.

Adverse effects are effects people don't want. Even if they are inseperable from the effects people do want (and the pharmacologists hope they aren't; they might be intrinsic to different peptides), nausea and vomiting are unpleasant. The source is referring to stuff like organ failure and death, though, which I'm sure kambo users aren't okay with and don't expect, saying there are "numerous" reports of such really nasty and unexpected effects. If you follow the link to the source and search on the word "numerous", you'll find that passage.

The pharmacology section is acceptable because it strictly avoids saying anything about treatment. If "slant" is what information we present, what Wikipedians usually call a "point of view" or "POV", one could say that Wikipedia deliberately echoes the "slant" taken by

WP:MEDRS sources. As Wikipedia:Neutral point of view

says: "Neutrality assigns weight to viewpoints in proportion to their prominence in reliable sources".

Again, I'd urge you to learn the basics of editing on less controversial and high-stakes topics before trying to edit medical content. If you really want to write or edit medical content, please do it in the

wp:draftspace, and request a review at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine. You might want to find a mentor

; they can help you learn to edit Wikipedia by helping you complete progressively harder tasks. You don't have to, but it migh be helpful for this sort of query.

And again, sorry for the slow response. HLHJ (talk) 05:32, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In response to these edits, I have serious concerns. I have undone a lot of the edits, and modified others. All but one of the sources added were not medrs, and many of the statements were not supported by the sources, but appear to be good-faith

Headbomb, Grafen, and Mx. Granger all edited the altered article; Headbomb removed one source and associated statement, which it seems was cited to a predatory journal. The edits were discussed at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard/Archive 86#Kambo cleanse, with Hob Gadling and also Nil Einne participating. No-one tried to verify the statements (check if the sources supported them), and they stayed in the article for six months. I rather fearfully searched for news reports of kambo-related deaths in the last six months, but didn't find any.

On the plus side, Ablations has found some new solid medres sources, and we should rewrite the article accordingly. I don't have time just now, but I've made a start.

Lede

Ablations, you changed:

The effects on humans usually include

diarrhea, and can lead to kidney, pancreas and liver damage

, seizures and death.

The effects on humans usually include

diarrhea, and has lead to kidney, pancreas and liver damage

, and death in an isolated number of users, usually due to negligence or contraindication.<ref>https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214750022000865</ref>

Someone later fixed the citation format, which is great. It seems to be a decent medrs source, which is wonderful. But I can't find any statement in the source[15] that supports the claim you added to the text. It's true that they only reviewed nine cases, but since this is a literature survey for

In your edit comment, you said: "The whole presentation of this page is bizarrely one-sided - even the references it sources such as liver damage are of single users, who the papers note had other factors such as alcoholism or drug use. It's very misrepresentative to say it "can lead to liver damage" based off such flawed reports of single cases. This edit cleans that up a bit by pointing this out properly." The medrs source you added clearly states that use can lead to liver damage, and we have no data on how common it is, so we can't say "it's rare" or "it's common". Nor can we dismiss effects as only occuring in those with other risk factors, unless medrs sources do. This is especially the cae with comercial products, as this sort of claim is often falsely made by marketers, without evidence.

In fact, the same medrs source says:

Although one limitation of our review is the small number of cases analyzed, the study suggests that Kambo cannot be considered a simple natural medicine. The substance contains numerous bioactive peptides that are still not fully known, with effects on various organs and systems, and that are possibly lethal. Although some studies suggest an analgesic potential of individual peptides, the combined intake of these molecules may have significant side effects. We therefore emphasize the importance of strict surveillance of the websites that encourage the use of this substance and urge greater control of e-commerce or illicit trafficking of animals and secretions, including through the dark web.

This sounds to me much more like the pre-existing "slant" of the article which you were objecting to than your "slant" ("point of view", or POV, is what we usualy call it; see

Medical claims

You replaced

There is currently no scientific basis to these claims.^[1][2]

with

Scientific basis to these claims is not extensive.^[1][2]

commenting: "As it stood previously, this section was in need of a review by someone else as it was surprisingly one-sided for WP. There are plenty of refences in this article alone, as well as PubMed and NCBI which outline various research and studies, *including* with human cells. The phrasings used here previously deny this entirely. Additionally, quoting the media(!!) for this as a source beggars belief."

While quoting the media for medical info is bad, the article in question reported that the Australian drug regulator has banned kambo, saying "There is no evidence of any medical benefit from Kambo, the TGA found". It also says that the Australian Medical Association supported this. They said: "There is currently insufficient evidence for its intended therapeutic effects" (there's the difference between a regulator providing public health info and a medical association talking to a regulator that will understand scientific evidence). We could cite them directly, tho. That would be better, and I've now done it, putting them in the same ref tags as they are likely to be used together. They are probably actually medrs sources, which is great! Derma is the quasi medrs source we previously used for lack of anything better. I've left it in for now, but we should probably review its use now we have multiple medrs sources.

You changed the statement without changing the sources. I think you did that because you think that

You replaced

There is no solid medical evidence on how the frog toxins work, whether they are useful for treating anything, and whether they can be used safely:

with

Research and studies on several of the peptides in the secretion have shown basis for their effects and mechanisms, and prompted further research interest - "The biological manifestations caused by skin secretions applied during these ceremonies (e.g., increased stamina, satiety) have prompted extensive pharmacological studies of the skin extracts^[3].

commenting: "Same thing here - please approach these articles with a more holistic and balanced presentation, as there were serious issues with omission of detail and phrasings used thus far. This is WP after all"

This is the sort of thing Wikipedia can't mention without

The source you cited is clearly a primary research study and not medrs. If you can't tell the difference, please go to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine and ask, before citing them for any sentence that you think might cause anyone to draw conclusions about effects on human health.

You replaced

Reports of adverse events are numerous, including for use with experienced guidance.^[1]

with

Some adverse events have been reported, including for use with experienced guidance, however, these are often due to negligence.^[4][1] In concert, the effects produced by the secretion appear as a kind of adverse reaction or anaphylactic shock, causing some confusion as to the danger and mechanisms of action^[5].

commenting " Reports of adverse events are not numerous - what is the source for this? Unless the 'adverse events' are being taken to mean the regular and reliable effects this produces. In which case, a different phrasing entirely is required. This has been clarified (with a reference added) to present a more holistic view to the reader - please check wording if necessary."

The source cited in the original text says "Besides its traditional use in the Amazon, Kambo has found its way into the Western alternative healing scene as well. While the reports on the beneficial effects of this ritual are numerous and range from relieving symptoms of pain syndromes, autoimmune diseases, skin disease, and cancer to substance abuse and depression (Hesselink, 2018), so are the accounts of adverse effects of participating in a rite, with or without experienced guidance. These include a transient syndrome of inappropriate antidiuretic hormone secretion (Leban et al., 2016), presumed drug induced liver injury in a chronic alcoholic (Pogorzelska and Lapinski, 2017), sudden death upon chronic kambo use in which autopsy revealed underlying heart disease possibly related to reduced myocardial perfusion (Aquila et al., 2018) and delayed kambo related symptoms in a 24-year-old woman 22 hours after the ritual (Li et al., 2018).". This clearly supports the statement, though I've changed "events" to "effects" to match the source more closely.

The source clearly shows it means unusual effects. AMA says kambo has "harmful effects both intended and adverse", but I think this is a quibble. Vomiting is an undesirable side effect. I have yet to read of anyone taking kambo in order to vomit; if they did, they could take an emetic with a stronger medical evidence base. They take kambo for what that Nature paper calls the "afterglow".

Of the citations you added, the first article is not MEDRS. It doesn't even seem to be on

The second paper is really interesting: Schmidt, Timo Torsten; Reiche, Simon; Hage, Caroline L. C.; Bermpohl, Felix; Majić, Tomislav (9 December 2020). "Acute and subacute psychoactive effects of Kambô, the secretion of the Amazonian Giant Maki Frog (Phyllomedusa bicolor): retrospective reports". Scientific Reports. 10 (1): 21544.

The medical literature reported the 2018 case in Italy of a person with no known preexisting conditions besides obesity, who, according to autopsy reports, died of

cardiac arrhythmia while under the effects of kambo use.^[6][7]

The medical literature reported the 2018 case in Italy of a person with obesity and venticular hypertrophy, who, according to autopsy reports, died of

cardiac arrhythmia while under the effects of kambo use.^[6][7]

In April 2019, a homicide investigation was opened into the death by "severe cerebral edema" of a young person who had taken kambo toxins in Chile, most likely owing to overly high water consumption which has caused several problems with kambo sessions; the import of the frog and its secretions is illegal in Chile.^[8][9]

The first medrs source you added supports the idea that drinking water might cause problems (and I've dded itto the article), but I don't think this information is in the sources cited.

You added this:

However, most of the few deaths reported have some indication of contraindication, pre-existing conditions, or negligence such as over-consumption of water, rather than 'overdosing' or toxicity from the substance itself.^{[6][7][8][9][10]}

The last ref is the medrs source again, but again it does not seem that these statements are made in that source, nor do I recall it in the other sources. They seem to be your interpretation of the sources, which is

Pharmacology

Research using human cells has created interest in immunostimulatory and anti-tumor effects of one of the peptides, Dermaseptin^[11]

This text needs a medrs source, because it could be interpreted to mean that kambo purges treat cancer. This is a primary research study, testing on human cells (some of them tumour cells) in a petri dish, and in a Patient derived xenograft. The latter is in vivo, technically, but it's not a clinical trial in humans, let alone a review of such trials.

I'm sorry if this has been a bit unrelentingly negative. I don't mean it that way; I've taken time to explain exactly what I'm doing, because I think you could learn to be a skilled editor. I really wish I'd seen your talk-page post sooner. I hope you won't be discouraged, and will continue to edit in a variety of topic areas. HLHJ (talk) 05:32, 25 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello @HLHJ, good to hear from you. I see you have done an extensive look through everything here which is great. I also appreciate your maturity and professionalism in your responses. I'll keep this short as I'm feeling overwhelmed and quite deflated after what I thought was a balanced set of edits with appropriate enough sources; certainly what I thought was at least on par enough with some of the overly fear-inducing statements made about it (some of which still remain) despite there being very little evidence for them. Not a dig at you (or any of the other editors) and I do appreciate my grasp of WP:MEDRS etc isn't perfect, but some of those things listed in the article are written in very overblown and factual terms despite there being very little evidence for some them; and the evidence that does exist for them is often on-par or even less than some of the evidence that counteracts their claims. Which is why I am feeling so deflated about having put in the work to a degree that was phrased appropriately for WP:MEDRS (or so I thought) to help improve what I see as a largely incorrect article, yet in many cases it appears (to me, at least) that due to the medical nature of it, there appears almost a tendency to readily agree with the 'dangers' despite small amounts of evidence, while simultaneously ignoring evidence that goes against this. I think this goes beyond merely being skeptical and actually will erode people's trust in WP as anyone who is experienced with kambo (such as myself) will read the presentation here and realize the presentation is not very honest or accurate. Which is unfortunate and ironic in today's age of misinformation. No digs at you personally or any of the other WP editors here.

So, sorry for the rant - but I'll try to keep it short and just address a couple of things that illustrate this:

---

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• In regards to venticular hypertrophy of the Italian man who died, you mention: "If I'm wrong, could you please quote the sentence(s) in the sources that say(s) the person had ventricular hypertrophy?"

Source is here, from the same study that the article in the WP page cites:

[16][17]

"The histopathological examination showed left ventricular hypertrophy.

and if you read the actual full report it goes even further:

"The autopsy showed left ventricular hypertrophy of the heart, focal moderate coronary artery narrowing, and pulmonary emphysema. It is possible that hypotensive effects of Kambo could have resulted in reduced myocardial perfusion particularly given the presence of moderate coronary artery disease and left ventricular hypertrophy. In addition, tachycardia induced by Kambo in the presence of left ventricular hypertrophy could have provoked a cardiac arrhythmia. The possibility that the death was unrelated to Kambo use cannot be excluded. This is the first death associated with Kambo use reported in the literature."

The fact that I cannot register to present this full report aside from a scihub link (which WP removes) should not be reason to present wrong information instead.

It would be truly bizarre to me to see this sort of thing ignored, despite being from *the* direct study of the case in question, yet the WP article frames it (incorrectly!) as "with no known pre-existing conditions" and gives the impression there was nothing wrong with the man at all and it's entirely due to kambo killing him. This is the sort of imbalance and irony I referred to above.

---

---

In regards to "As I recall there's only one well-documented case of liver failure, but more of biochemical markers of liver harm. I'm not sure bile reflux (which must have happened if someone is vomiting bile) is good for the liver, either, but I really don't know. You need tests on real humans before you can say how something will affect humans." - if you look at the sources of any page that mentions this, they ALL refer back to that one, lone case of the Italian man who died (with venticular hypertrophy, and was overweight with a drinking habit!) - This one, for which the full paper goes into great detail. This study is the one that every article claiming "liver damage" refers to, but WP doesn't care that the article itself has pre-existing contributing factors making it misinformation to say it usually causes liver damage. This is the sort of thing that I've been finding so disheartening. It makes WP very untrustworthy. But it seems to be taken simply as fact even when the original source isn't scrutinized with anywhere near as much depth as the positive aspects are. Please can we do something about this.

• In regards to the anti-tumor effects of Dermaseptin, this isn't a stretch - it might be 'interpreted' by some as 'treating cancer' but that is not how I wrote it. Additionally - back to the irony and imbalance - the same treatment is not given when it comes to potentially harmful effects; they seem to be all readily accepted and presented by the WP as common results, when in fact they aren't. Regarding the proof of dermaseptin:

[18]https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-13676752 and [19]https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0044351 and [20]https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2019.01421/full.

The statement "Research using human cells has created interest in immunostimulatory and anti-tumor effects of one of the peptides, Dermaseptin" is entirely accurate and fair in my opinion. I would love to dig through for more specific pieces of the article to present here, but I am really disheartened to see how this panned out after my last set of notes and edits to the page, having most of them shot down and instead have inaccurate info presented as fact instead. It really isn't accurate or fair from what I can see. "The effects on humans usually include....SIADH, kidney damage (including acute renal failure), pancreas damage, liver damage including toxic hepatitis, dermatomyositis, bursting of the food pipe/gullet due to vomiting, seizures, and death" - this is simply flat out wrong. People would be dropping dead on a weekly basis if half the claims the WP page makes were even remotely true. Where is the proof of this being a usual result?

---

---

I think I will basically just give up here I'm really sad to say. The irony mentioned earlier comes from approaches to editing like "You need tests on real humans before you can say how something will affect humans" or But we don't yet have enough medical evidence to be sure, so we can't say so on Wikipedia - and yet, the article readily lists the most extreme and uncommon outcomes of kambo sessions as if they were common results, whilst being too scared to even hint at the therapeutic research that has been done. Again, I say this with as much respect as I can muster and it's not meant to be personal as I appreciate your input. But the article legitimately is dishonest to the point that it makes me wonder how there couldn't be any sort of bias behind it. Ablations (talk) 22:29, 30 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Ablations, I agree that the content is unbalanced and now we have some medrs we can and should add some more content. I didn't do it because the edits I mad took me forever, and I had several other commitments and hoped others might take it up. But one of the new medrs sources is the medical research commmunity recommmending legal bans on kambo until further research is done. The precautionary principle is a bias, but it's not dishonesty; more bending over backwards not to fool yourself that something harmful isn't. I'll give a fuller response when I can, and I hope some other contributors to this page will work on the article, too. HLHJ (talk) 21:58, 1 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks HLHJ and in retrospect after cooling off a little - I appreciate your framing and explanation of the precautionary principal, and the linking to it. This has helped me see and understand better part of the prevailing approach that has taken place here (even if you can gather from my inputs that I'm not fully on board with it for the reasons outlined in the previous response from me). It is very draining when you're emotionally invested in a topic to find what you think should be fair sources that help paint a fuller and more balanced picture, and yet have them ignored - but that's ok - I appreciate having been heard and I'd like to apologize for both taking your time and for my awfully unkempt editorial style of the responses. I wish you all the best of health for your holiday period 🙂 Ablations (talk) 10:47, 4 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Preamble

There is a lot of contention in this article it seems about what should and shouldn't be included. Some editors have left notes such as "this might imply it works" and/or have removed very valid sentences from the page mentioning simply that therapeutic interest and medical interest exists and is a promising topic of research. These types of behaviors do not seem fit or unbiased enough for WP where the core credo is open access to information - and this is absolutely achievable without having to make strong statements based off non-clinical sources. The following are just a few sources which back up a few of the avenues of research, but there are plenty more. The point here is not to provide conclusive proof of medical effectiveness (although some of these, particularly the Dermorphin clinical trials, are extremely close) but moreso to show you, as editors, that there is serious medical interest in various properties of kambo which is based of a wealth of studies and research.

I would implore you to take this aspect into account in order to keep the article open to all, rather than policing what you think people should and shouldn't know about by removing references to general interest in therapeutic potential and all the rest including comments like "this might imply it works" (this is far too generalized a comment and you should not be concerned with policing what people 'might' think, rather focus on providing open access to info as long as it adheres to proper WP protocols).

Dermaseptin in kambo

Recently, we have found that the skin secretions of the Amazonian tree frog Phyllomedusa bicolor contains molecules with antitumor and angiostatic activities and identified one of them as the antimicrobial peptide dermaseptin (Drs) B2. In the present study we further explored the in vitro and in vivo antitumor activity of this molecule and investigated its mechanism of action.

Here, we report the presence of two anti-proliferative peptides active against cancer cells in the skin secretions of the South American tree frog, Phyllomedusa bicolor. Sequence analysis indicated that this activity was due to two antimicrobial α-helical cationic peptides of the dermaseptin family (dermaseptins B2 and B3). This result was confirmed using synthetic dermaseptins. When tested in vitro, synthetic B2 and B3 dermaseptins inhibited the proliferation of the human prostatic adenocarcinoma PC-3 cell line by more than 90%...Dermaseptins B2 and B3 could, therefore, represent interesting new pharmacological molecules with antitumor and angiostatic properties for the development of a new class of anticancer drugs.

--This is a PUBMED source.

Dermorphins and Deltorphins in kambo

"Moreover, it has been established as more selective and potent with long-lasting analgesia compared to morphine after intracerebroventricular administration in animal models. In 1985, the first clinical trial results of a randomized, placebo-controlled study in postoperative pain were reported, and dermorphin administered via the intrathecal route was again impressively superior over the placebo and the reference compound morphine."

--and a link to one of the papers this is referencing

"Deltorphins are endogenous linear heptapeptides, isolated from skin extracts of frogs belonging to the genus Phyllomedusa, that have a higher affinity and selectivity for delta opioid binding sites than any other natural compound known"

General interest in therapeutic and medical uses

Most of the bioactive peptides so far characterized have displayed potential applications in medicine, such as phyllocaeruleins with hypotensive properties, tachykinins and phyllokinins as vasodilators, dermorphins and deltorphins with opiate-like properties, and adenoregulins with antibiotic properties (Daly et al., 1992; Mor et al., 1994a; Lacombe et al., 2000; Hesselink and Sacerdote, 2019)

Due to the numerous biological activities of these substances and the similarities with the amino acid sequences related to mammalian neuropeptides and hormones, many have aroused the interest from a medical and pharmacological perspective, such as in the production of new drugs (Lazarus et al., 1999; Basir et al., 2000; Chen et al., 2002; Doyle et al., 2002; Severini et al., 2002; Conceição et al., 2006).

--full paper here, with further links and plenty of sources Ablations (talk) 02:20, 30 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]