Drugs Blasted through Skin Needle-free system could be a painless way of delivering medication

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Drugs Blasted through Skin

Needle-free system could be a painless way of delivering medication

By Betterhumans Staff

4/19/2004

A painless method of blasting medication through the skin could eliminate

the use of needles for some drug delivery and blood analysis.

The technique, called microscission, could be of particular benefit to

people such as diabetics who need to regularly inject drugs and monitor

their blood.

Weaver and colleagues from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences

and Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts have shown that the technique can

successfully deliver medication through the skin without the use of needles.

Breaking the barrier

Skin functions as a barrier to foreign invaders, and breaking the barrier is

considered a challenge.

Hypodermic needles work, but piercing the skin comes with side-effects such

as bruising‹as well as patient fear.

Instead of needles, microscission uses a stream of gas to blast skin with

tiny crystals of aluminum oxide.

These particles remove the surface-layer of skin and create tiny holes

called microconduits in underlying layers.

The width of the microconduits is determined by holes punched in a mask

placed over the skin

In less than 20 seconds, the gas blast creates the microconduits and removes

the crystals and loosened skin.

Numbing success

Weaver and colleagues used microscission to create four microconduits in a

small area of skin on volunteers.

Volunteers said that the procedure felt like a gentle stream of air against

their skin.

The researchers then applied a pad soaked in the anesthetic lidocaine over

the microconduits.

Two minutes later, the volunteers had lost feeling in the area, showing that

the medication had been successfully delivered.

The anesthetic took longer to act in deeper microconduits that yielded

blood, possibly because of blood outflow or blood clotting.

Deep blood-yielding microconduits, however, could be useful for people with

diabetes who have to currently check their blood sugar levels with a finger

prick.

The microscission research is reported in the journal BMC Medicine (read

abstract).

http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2004-04-19-2