A high-tech adhesive patch could be an easier and faster way to deliver medication to the body.
The patch emits painless sound waves that open tiny channels in the skin, allowing painkillers and other medications stored in the patch to quickly pass through the body.
This could help treat skin conditions, researchers say, and get painkillers, hormones and muscle relaxants into the body more quickly — rather than waiting for them to be absorbed by the stomach like a tablet, or absorbed slowly over several hours like with existing plasters.
A trial revealed that the new patch resulted in 26 times more of a drug being absorbed through the skin than other types of patches.
The skin has long been an attractive route for drug delivery, as it means they can go more directly to where they are needed, bypassing the stomach, where a significant portion of the dose is broken down.
The patch emits painless sound waves that open tiny channels in the skin, allowing painkillers and other drugs to enter the body (file image)
However, the outer layer of the skin is tough, as it evolved as a barrier to protect against harmful organisms.
So while some skin patches are already being used to deliver drugs into the bloodstream, such as hormone replacement therapy, most drugs are ruled out because they are composed of molecules that are too large. Microneedling skin patches can help deliver certain medications, but they can be uncomfortable.
Meanwhile, irradiating the skin with sound waves is known to open tiny channels in the skin – just enough to allow liquid medicines to pass through. But until recently, this relied on bulky, immobile hospital equipment.
Now researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US have distilled the ultrasound technology into a skin patch.
The 50p-sized patch contains small disc-shaped “piezoelectric transducers,” which convert electrical current into sound waves.
Each disc has a cavity that contains the drug dissolved in fluid. Piezoelectric transducers produce an electric current from the body’s own movement and convert the current into sound waves – these flow through the liquid medicine, creating millions of tiny bubbles. These bubbles force open small channels in the skin.
Before the recent study, the patch was filled with niacinamide (a type of B vitamin used in sunscreens and moisturizers) diluted in liquid.
Using pig skin, it was able to deliver the same amount in just 30 minutes as six hours with a microneedle patch, the journal Advanced Materials reported in March.
Researchers are refining the patch so it can deliver more drugs, including the strong painkiller fentanyl. Similar devices could also deliver hormone drugs or cancer treatment drugs, they said. Tests on human volunteers are planned.
Dr. Marcel de Matas, a pharmaceutical scientist and honorary research fellow at the University of Manchester – who founded the North West Center for Advanced Drug Delivery to put scientific research into practice – said: “The delivery of drugs through the skin has long been been an attractive and cost-effective method. route of administration.
“The use of ultrasound as a means of promoting the passage of drugs through the skin clearly creates fierce competition for more recent developments, such as microneedling.”
Can Statins Help Treat Itchy, Dry Skin?
Statins may help treat the skin condition psoriasis, according to research.
The cholesterol-lowering drugs reduced the number of scaly patches and may also have anti-inflammatory benefits, according to a study from China.
Psoriasis affects one in 50 people in the UK and is the result of overproduction of skin cells: this leads to dry, scaly patches that can bleed and can also be painful and itchy.
Researchers at the Shanghai Skin Disease Hospital concluded that statins significantly improve lesions by stopping the overproduction of keratinocytes, cells in the outer layer of skin.
Asthma patients may be 40 percent more likely to develop osteoarthritis, reports Stanford University in the US
It followed 117,000 adults with asthma for 16 years and found that these patients had a much higher risk of joint wear and tear, according to the journal Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.
Allergy-related conditions are thought to activate immune cells in the joints, causing pain and inflammation.
Red light therapy slows myopia in children
Six minutes of red light a day delays the development of nearsightedness in children.
Eight- to 13-year-olds who wore glasses for nearsightedness were exposed to a few minutes of red light from a desk lamp twice a day for a year, with a control group. Nearsightedness progressed at a third of the rate in the red light group, reports the journal Ophthalmology.
In nearsightedness or nearsightedness, the eyeball becomes too long, making distant objects blurry.
One theory is that red light increases blood flow to the eye, which somehow affects growth.
A skin patch that exposes the body to small amounts of peanut protein can cure severe allergies.
Gradually increasing exposure to these proteins has been shown to help patients’ immune systems become more tolerant to them.
In a new trial, two-thirds of toddlers who wore the peanut patch, called Viaskin, every day for a year showed a significant reduction in their sensitivity to peanuts, reports the New England Journal of Medicine.
Treating shingles nerve pain with the patient’s own blood
Can a blood test in the back make shingles less painful?
Researchers at the University of Hong Kong are testing whether injections of platelet-rich plasma can relieve postherpetic neuralgia, nerve pain that is a common complication of shingles.
About one in five people with shingles develop the condition, in which inflammation of the nerves under the skin causes burning, stabbing, or stabbing pain — this can last for months or even years.
Thirty patients receive injections of their own blood, processed to be rich in small cells called platelets that can calm inflammation. It is hoped that a single injection will relieve both the pain of shingles and postherpetic neuralgia.
Wound gel can relieve the symptoms of menopause
A silicone gel used to treat wounds can relieve some common menopausal symptoms.
More than half of women develop genitourinary problems, including vaginal dryness and frequent urination, during and after menopause, when a drop of estrogen thins and reduces the elasticity of the vagina, bladder, and urethra (which drains urine from the body). .
Treatments range from moisturizers to vaginal estrogen creams, but don’t work for everyone.
In a trial at the Orange Coast Women’s Medical Center in the US, 100 women will apply a silicone gel or estrogen cream and compare the effect on their symptoms after three months.
The gel, normally used to create a flexible covering for wounds, is believed to form a protective layer over the affected tissue and moisturize it.