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The main use is to detect how much endotoxins (proteins that cause our immune system to react) are present in a sample. This is important because we often use bacteria to produce medicine and then remove the bacteria from that medicine. This checks for anything left behind in that process, far more sensitive than any other test or machine can do.

If it wasn’t for horseshoe crab blood, creating medicine that is safe for injection would be a lot harder and potentially more dangerous.

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Rolder@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Wonder why we can’t just make the coagulant ourselves. Or maybe we can but milking crabs is still cheaper.

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- prayer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  My guess without checking would be regulatory. The FDA doesn’t want to approve an alternative to an already working method unless it can be shown to truly be an alternative. That testing is lengthy and expensive.
  
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- wolfpack86@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It’s not a chemical compound, the active component is an amebocyte. Same reason we can’t just make red blood cells and need other humans to donate them.
  
  There have been other attempts at making synthetic coagulants without broad success. The thing that seems to be the most effective at minimizing the horseshoe crab burden is using machines to do the detection and cut down on the amount of LAL needed vs running the test visually.
  
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