Scientists Are Working On Ways To Swap the Needle For a Pill (npr.org) 58
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: One team of scientists, from MIT's Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital, developed a system to deliver insulin that actually still uses a needle -- but is so small you can swallow it and the injection doesn't hurt. They built a pea-size device containing a spring that ejects a tiny dart of solid insulin into the wall of the stomach, says gastroenterologist Carlo Giovanni Traverso, an associate physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital. "We chose the stomach as the site of delivery because we recognized that the stomach is a thick and robust part of the GI tract," Traverso says. Once the device gets into the stomach, the humidity there allows the spring to launch the insulin dart. As the researchers report in the journal Science, they've tested the device on pigs, and it can deliver a therapeutic dose of insulin provided the pig has an empty stomach.
On the other side of the U.S., nanoengineer Ronnie Fang of the University of California, San Diego and his colleagues have a different delivery system. Theirs is a kind of ingestible microrocket, about the size of a grain of sand, that is designed to zip past the stomach and into the small intestine. "It actually propels [itself] using bubbles in a reaction of magnesium with biological fluids," Fang says. The rocket has a coating that protects its payload from the acidic and enzyme-filled environment of the stomach. Once the rocket enters the small intestine, the change in acidity causes the coating to dissolve and lets the rocket stick to the intestinal wall to release its payload, in this case a vaccine protein. As Fang and his colleagues report in Nano Letters, their delivery system works in mice, but human testing is probably many years off.
On the other side of the U.S., nanoengineer Ronnie Fang of the University of California, San Diego and his colleagues have a different delivery system. Theirs is a kind of ingestible microrocket, about the size of a grain of sand, that is designed to zip past the stomach and into the small intestine. "It actually propels [itself] using bubbles in a reaction of magnesium with biological fluids," Fang says. The rocket has a coating that protects its payload from the acidic and enzyme-filled environment of the stomach. Once the rocket enters the small intestine, the change in acidity causes the coating to dissolve and lets the rocket stick to the intestinal wall to release its payload, in this case a vaccine protein. As Fang and his colleagues report in Nano Letters, their delivery system works in mice, but human testing is probably many years off.
Uhhm... insulin shots don't hurt. (Score:3, Interesting)
As a guy who has been using it for at least ten years, most of the time it doesn't hurt. Even when it does, it is not massive pain.
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Stupidity and jumping to conclusions transcends politics.
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Great! (Score:2)
Great! Only $3.14 million a year.
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Said the piemaker after selling one million units.
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Get people less obese, then we have to need to stick needles in them or shove more stuff down their throats (they already shove too much anyway)
People aren't always diabetic simply because they're over-weight idiot -- and, sometimes, alternate diets, to help mitigate the effects, and taking insulin can actually make weight management more difficult.
For example, Halle Berry, Nick Jonas, Sharon Stone, Jay Cutler have Type 1 Diabetes, while Tom Hanks, Salma Hayek have Type 2.
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The dumbest idea I'll read all day, probably (Score:1)
Eat a spring-loaded micro-injection pill to accomplish a minor convenience. What could go wrong. Yeah don't work on curing cancer, make a bullshit product instead. Great work Harvard/MIT money-grubs.
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These are totally different types of research.
Do you honestly think every scientist in the world is sitting around working on the same problem, or even informed on the same subjects?
Pricing, Pricing, Pricing (Score:4, Insightful)
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Fear of needles is a severe problem in medicine. It causes people to skip injections they really need. There's also a problem with scarification and bruising.
It's why injection ports, essentially a multi-use cannula are a thing for insulin injecting patients.
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No user data gathered? (Score:1)
It's shocking how out of touch medical science can be. The problem with shots - for people who have fear of them - was never about the pain. It was the bone-deep aversion to sharp objects being stuck in the skin. Just knowing it's going in. Whether it hurts or not is utterly irrelevant. A "painless" needle is just as uncomfortable as a painful one. Perhaps even more so, because at least with the physical pain it can disctract you from the thought of what the needle entails. It's difficult to understand for
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For those with fear of needles and type 1, there are multi-use simple install injection ports.
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Some people with needle phobia, perhaps. Others actually fear injection pain, which is why devices like the ShotBlocker [bionix.com] exist.
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That's the thing though, a painless needle they can go without knowing how it works and just take it as "take pill, get better"
The sight of the needle typically is what sets off those kind of people and their fear. No needle to see, and no one telling them how that pill works means that fear stays locked away
Jack Putter machine, zero defects (Score:2)
Seen the capsule and the damage done ? (Score:2)
I hit the city and I lost my band [youtu.be]
I watched the lozenge take another man
Gone, gone, the damage done
Sorry. That just doesn't ring for me like the original [genius.com].
Insulin Dose (pill) Size / Absorption Rate? (Score:1)
Two things I didn't see mentioned in the linked article, but will be addressed at some point, is the fact that the dose of insulin can vary wildly depending on current blood glucose level (take more to get it back to the target), and food consumption (more food = more insulin). (So lots of pills of a single dose, several pills of varying doses, or fill the pills yourself?)
The other thing I don't recall seeing was how fast the body absorbs the insulin delivered into the stomach lining compared to the (rough
Sodium > Magnesium (Score:4, Funny)
If instead of magnesium it used a sodium reaction it would propel itself much faster, and at the same time would provide a dramatic cure for constipation.
Oddly enough.. INSULIN INHALER (Score:2)
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What happens when the insulin dart is a dud, it hits some food, doesn't pierce the stomach, etc. There is no verification it worked.
I was thinking the exact same thing.
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Sounds like a James Bond gadget to me... (Score:2)
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I can hear Q's narration in my head: "Now pay attention, 007.
I think Q always called him "Picard". 7 (of nine) and Q never met, AFAIK.
Stupid drug laws (Score:2)
I remember going shopping with my mom and they'd have boxes of single use syringes on the shelf for people to buy. My sister has type I diabetes and so needs insulin injections. Each box seemed quite inexpensive as I recall, otherwise they would not be out in the open on the shelf for people to grab while shopping. Then one day they disappeared.
You see the illegal drug abusers were buying these same syringes for their habit and we can't have that, apparently. The "people who know best" in government req
Interesting (Score:1)