Too many people don’t like needles, or are afraid of them, a problem that makes it difficult to get many people vaccinated, according to the U.S. CDC.
And so, to combat needle fright, scientists are working hard to find a way to deliver a vaccine without a needle. A doctoral student at the University of Oxford’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering thinks he may have found just the right device, in the form of an ultrasound that would deliver the vaccine through the skin with a series of pulses.
“Our method relies on an acoustic effect called ‘cavitation,’ which is the formation and popping of bubbles in response to a sound wave,” the device’s inventor said. The process involves three steps. The first step clears the outer layers of dead skin cells; the second step involves a pump that drives the drug into the passages created by the first step.
The last step opens the membranes so the other two steps will work.
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SOURCE:
MedicalXPress December 3, 2023
Source: Original Article
Publish Date: 2023-12-04 23:02:05