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New technique may reduce painful shots
By Karla Gale
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Researchers have come up with a new
technique of delivering drugs and drawing blood that could reduce
the use of painful needle injections, according to a report in BMC
Medicine.
"Our approach has been to make tiny openings in skin with
negligible side effects that let you get large or small molecules
across, such as drugs or vaccines," senior investigator Dr.
James C. Weaver told Reuters Health.
Known as microscission, the technique uses a pressurized gas stream
to deliver tiny particles into the skin. These particles form tiny
tunnels or "microconduits" that allow the sampling of
blood or passage of drugs through the skin.
Weaver and colleagues from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences
and Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, tested the technique
on their own skin.
"When it was done on me, it felt like someone was blowing
air across my arm. If it went deep enough to get blood, there was
a faint tingling or prickling sensation, which is the blood entering
the tissue, not the act of making the microconduit itself,"
Weaver said.
The authors found that the technique provided enough blood for
glucose testing, which is commonly done in diabetics. It was also
effective in delivering lidocaine, a common anesthetic.
Their research provides a "proof of concept" that microscission
can be used to administer medication or acquire blood samples, Weaver
said. But now "a whole bunch of hurdles" remain to be
crossed before this technique can be used in clinical practice,
he added.
SOURCE: BMC Medicine, April 19, 2004.
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