Vaccinations could be made less painful by treating skin with a vaccine-laden liquid and using ultrasound to push it into the body

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.

  • ItsMeSpez@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    1 year ago

    I don’t think there would be any need to dispose of any part of the ultrasound system; perhaps a disposable paper or plastic cover to speed up cleaning between patients. Meanwhile the needles are single use and must be disposed of properly since they are a bio-hazard. Can’t really see how a needle could possibly compete on the waste side of things.