Novichok Nerve Agent Strikes Two New Victims in the UK

The nerve agent Novichok has poisoned two new victims in England, The Telegraph reports. The two collapsed after visiting Salisbury, the same town where former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were attacked with the chemical weapon back in March.

A man and a woman in their 40s, identified by The Telegraph as Charles Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, were rushed to the hospital on Saturday after they passed out at a home in Amesbury, according to a televised police statement. A witness told The Telegraph that both were foaming at the mouth — a sign of nerve-agent poisoning.

At first, doctors thought contaminated drugs were to blame. But by Monday July 2nd, doctors were concerned enough about the patients' symptoms that they sent samples to defense laboratory Porton Down for testing. Those tests revealed that the couple had been poisoned by Novichok, authorities announced today.

The term Novichok actually represents a collection of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union towards the end of the Cold War. Like other nerve agents, they work by glomming onto an enzyme that's key for healthy signaling between nerves and muscles — leading to drooling, seizures, and paralysis. "So, it's a horrible way to die," Peter Chai, a medical toxicologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, told The Verge in March. Novichok agents are also thought to directly damage nerves, according to a paper Chai recently published in the journal Toxicology Communications.

That's why prompt treatment is so important — and knowing that a nerve agent is to blame will help. Treatment will likely include drugs to dry out the patients' secretions and seizure medication. That deals with the...