Afraid Of Injections? - Cost Effective Painless Injections Are Here

If you are the one haunted by thought of getting an injection from the doctor or more worst, a diabetic patient, here is a good news for you.

A group of researchers from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, developed needles that are less than 1 mm in size. It can be used to administer drug painlessly into one's body.

Its Development:

The group fabricated a hollow Carbon microneedle array with flow channels using a conventional C-MEMS process.
The needles were initially developed from SU-8, which is a photosensitive polymer, in the year 2018 but were brittle and non-biocompatible. To overcome this, they were modified by a process of pyrolysis. It resulted in glassy carbon needles which were almost 300 times stronger than the originals. Being made of carbon, they were also biocompatible. Pyrolysis at 900 degree Celsius for around 60 minutes eliminated most of Nitrogen and Oxygen in the polymer.

Microneedle array was inserted into Mouse skin and withdrawn to examine the mechanical interaction of the microneedles with skin. It was found that the microneedles remain intact after retraction over multiple cycles when penetrated through the skin of the animal.

Future perspectives:

The team is now working on the development of controlled Drug Delivery System including micropumps, a drug reservoir, and microneedles with the aim of developing a cost effective system to deliver drugs to the patient in painless and precise manner.
This will particularly be helpful for diabetic patients while administering insulin on a regular basis. Though it doesn't cut the rates of insulin but can decrease the device price by almost 50%.

For more information such as the research team and description of the procedure on this recent discovery, follow this link.
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