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 guess it’s interesting but this seems to have minimal use case. For those with reactions to injections and such it’s useful, but it seems much easier to use a needle in most cases. Also that article claims that it “doesn’t damage the skin”, but I don’t see why a vaccine would cause any meaningful damage to the skin in the first place.
Edit: Okay I’m seeing now how this would be useful for more frequent injections like insulin and such if it can be used like that.
It literally tears a hole in the flesh with a puncture wound. It’s the definition of damaging.
Minor damage, but damage none the less.
I guess the fear of needles is a constant problem when children are vaccinated. Having an alternative method ready could make it easier for children, parents and doctors.
Not only children. I know a guy that passes out (or almost does) when they try to inject him with needles.
I know a guy like that too. Okay, it’s me. I have to ask the doctor to let me be lying down when I get a shot. But at least it’s not as embarrassing as passing out in the little chair and have a 115 lb. nurse trying to hold me up before I hit the floor. That has happened more than once.