A team of investigators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) argues that it may have discovered a new way of combating the bladder disease called interstitial cystitis, which affects more than 500,000 people in the United States.
These are only the official numbers, experts say, but the actual figures might be a lot higher. As much as another half million people might have this disease and not report it, they add.
Most patients are women, in whom the disease manifests itself through a series of symptoms that include painful and very frequent urination. At this point, there is no lasting cure for this condition.
There are of course ways to remedy the affliction, such as for example administering pain-reducing drugs such as lidocaine into the bladder itself. This is done through a catheter, and the procedure is humiliating, and also needs to be repeated frequently.
But the MIT team believes it may have discovered a simpler, better solution to the problem. Their method revolves around using a small medical-grade silicone tube, which is filled with a solid drug.
A small laser beam is used to pierce a tiny hole in the side of the tube, through which a shape-memory wire made of nitinol is inserted inside the tube. The entire device is then straightened up.
Experts insert the tube into a catheter and then inject it into the bladder. Once inside, the shape-memory wire contracts into a pretzel-like shape, forcing the drug-filled tube to do the same.
This makes it impossible for the bladder to eliminate the tube during urination. The device therefore remains inside the bladder for as much as two weeks, steadily releasing the drug it contains.
According to the MIT team, this time frame is sufficient for treating an interstitial cystitis flare-up, which generally tends to last for 10 to 14 days, and take place 2 to 3 times per year.
The work was conducted by the MIT Sumitomo Electric Industries professor of engineering Michael Cima and Heejin Lee, PhD. Their device is currently undergoing phase-1 clinical trials.
Details of how the delivery system operates have been published online in the latest issue of the Journal of Controlled Release, and is scheduled to appear in print in an upcoming edition of the same journal.
“The biggest problem with these treatments is the patients don’t get the drug long enough,” Cima explains. The most common way of addressing this is to use very high concentrations of drugs
The MIT group expects their device to finish testing and validation within the next couple of years, and to enter the market no later than 2014.
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