Painless Injections

The next flu vaccine delivery system? Courtesy of Gary Meek

Thursday, August 20th, 2009--

The most effective treatment for macular degeneration (the most common cause of blindness in the U.S.), is an injection directly into the eye. The treatment is painful, has to be done monthly, and can be dangerous as repeated injections can cause a buildup of scar tissue. (And there is always the danger that a doctor may stick the needle in a little too far.) But a new microneedle patch may make the repeated injections with a hypodermic needle a thing of the past.

The microneedle patch, pioneered by chemical and biomolecular engineer Mark Prausnitz and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is about one quarter the size of a postage stamp and contains an array of needles each only a few hundred microns long (or about the width of a few strands of human hair). That’s long enough to break the skin for the administration of medications and vaccines, but short enough to miss the nerves that register pain.

The technology could one day be used to make vaccine patches, create safer diabetes self-treatments and make that “little pinch” from a doctor’s needle a thing of the past.

-Erik Ortlip