14 DAY TRIAL // Vaccination can be painful for people that can't stand needles. It can also be quite dangerous if the sterilization procedures are not thorough, the case being in underdeveloped countries. If the future, nobody will probably have to worry about needles anymore, as scientists tested a new concept.
The idea of a vaccine patch was developed and it became possible thanks to microneedles. They can penetrate into the outer layers of the skin and, as they dissolve, they release the vaccine within. This method might just be the new painless needle-free way of having your flu shots.
The paper presenting this alternative was published in Nature Medicine and it is the result of a collaboration between Mark Prausnitz, a chemical and biological engineer at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Richard Compans, a microbiologist at Emory.
The microneedles are based on a polymer that dissolves rapidly in contact with bodily fluids. They are just a few hundred micrometers in length, enough to enter the skin's outer layers and deliver the vaccine while melting away. The vaccine then travels through the skin and spreads inside the body, just as a normal injection would, and even faster, according to mice-testing.
These patches, like most new drugs, were tested on mice. 30 days later, a comparison was made between the effects of the patch and those of the injection and the results were almost identical: both groups of mice could fight off the infection. Moreover, vaccine patches seemed to trigger higher immunity, as mice vaccinated through the skin had a lower virus level in their lungs.
Mark Prausnitz claims that even though the traditional vaccines were injected into the muscle, the skin could be a better conductor. He says that the body responds very fast to any kind of aggression on its surface and the cells that start a quick immune response inside the skin are exactly what the patch vaccine needs to be efficient.
The next step for the researchers is to obtain a funding for a clinical trial of the influenza vaccine patch on humans. This type of skin administrated drugs might also prove very useful in other infectious diseases.
The patch vaccination could convince people to act preventive and see a doctor for the necessary vaccines or even do them themselves. It is also a painless method and Eco-friendly, as it produces no medical waste.