New needle technology in the works?
Those of us with diabetes that take insulin know a lot about needles. We inject many times a day. We may also use needles to take Symlin, or simple to puncture our skin for blood glucose testing.Well now there's a possibility that we'll see truly pain free needles in the future.
A team of researchers has created hollow needles, made of ceramics, that are so fine that you don't feel them.
There are no pictures of these yet, and it's not clear when or if they'll be on the market. But I'm intrigued by the quote in the press release:
“Microneedles may be integrated with micropumps and biosensors to provide autonomous sampling of blood, analysis, and drug-delivery capabilities for treatment of chronic disease,” he said. “For example, one needle, pump and sensor unit would assay the glucose level in interstitial fluid of patients with diabetes mellitus. Another needle, pump and drug-delivery unit would deliver insulin in a continuous or programmed manner.”I like the idea of having a micropump instead of the pager-sized unit I carry around with me all the time.
Labels: micropump, needles, research
posted by Bernard @ 1:22 PM
1 Comments:
Question: one of the reasons that needles aren't smaller than they are is because its difficult to get medications to flow through really small spaces. Why wouldn't that be a problem with these needles?
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