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- cross-posted to:
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Vaccines can be delivered through the skin using ultrasound. This method doesn’t damage the skin and eliminates the need for painful needles. To create a needle-free vaccine, Darcy Dunn-Lawless at the University of Oxford and his colleagues mixed vaccine molecules with tiny, cup-shaped proteins. They then applied liquid mixture to the skin of mice and exposed it to ultrasound – like that used for sonograms – for about a minute and a half.
I’m diabetic. This would be awesome!!
Miniatyrize ultrasound part, make it communicare with those glucose sensors that are placed on shoulder, make it portable enough and Presto! Artificial pancreas.
Nice Idea!
Even the long application time is no issue there, since you just carry the device with you
I’m dumb…what does being diabetic have to do with inability to get needle vaccines? I’m seriously asking.
There’s type 1 and 2 diabetes. I believe type 2 requires you to regularly prick your fingers to test your blood sugar levels several times a day while type 1 requires mandatory insulin shots into your stomach a few times a day. Basically a diabetic fuckin hates needles for good reason and to be able to do that with ultrasound would be rad.
It could be that if vaccines can be attached to a “cup-like protein” and given through the skin, than maybe insulin could too. Just less needle sticks overall
OHHHHHHH. Jeez it took me way too long for this to click. Thanks!
If i remember correctly diabetic people have a hard time closing a wound
The pancreas is an organ which produces a hormone called insulin, which regulates the intake of sugar from the blood.
In type 1 diabetics, the pancreas has been damaged by an autoimmune reaction, so they need to monitor their blood sugar and administer insulin to the blood using external equipment.
This can be done manually with a needle and glucose tester for measuring blood sugar, and a syringe for administering insulin, or an insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor, which adhere to the skin and have continuous access to the blood through a cannula.
Being able to administer insulin without a needle or cannula would eliminate a common point of failure in this system. The cannula of an insulin pump can easily become dislodged from the skin when disturbed and leak insulin onto the surface, resulting in high blood sugar and wasted insulin.
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Will anyone actually do this, if it takes 1-1.5 minutes and needs a heavy machine?
People who don’t like needles? Or do you mean institutions?
I’m sure there are some people that would help, but I went from blood draws making me nearly pass out to self injecting meth(otrexate) once a week after my RA diagnosis.
A blood draw ruins my week (not exaggerated). If I were diagnosed with diabetes I would end up dead. For me, anything that avoids a needle is worth it.
Exactly. For you it’d likely be worth it. For people like me it’d be a waste - the answer was to nut up. I also require hour-long transfusions every two months. I’m not sure they could do anything but maybe put you under anesthesia for something like that.
Yeah, I really can’t imagine. My wife (who works in the medical field) tried to help me “get used to” needles and I didn’t make a single lick of progress. With my kind of issue, it’s common that the issue gets worse and not better if you get shots more often. Something about my subconscious forming a feedback loop with my reactions to create worse reactions over time. I didn’t stop breathing from shots when the symptoms started when I was 8 or 9, just got dizzy/lightheaded and passed out.
That sounds insanely distressing. I won’t recount my bad experiences. None of them were harmful, but some nurses aren’t as gentle as others.
Yeah. I half-mentioned it elsewhere. I was in an ER and needed to have blood drawn. I was just barely staying conscious by leaning back with an ice pack, but they needed the room so a nurse came in and said “yeah you’re fine” and lugged me from the blood-draw chair into a wheelchair. My wife wanted to hit her (lol) but it took the 2 of them to keep me from hitting the floor instead of the wheelchair because I started to black out from suddenly standing.
Some nurses are idiots.