Many of us take pills daily whether its our daily vitamins or some particular prescription medicine needed to improve or maintain our health. And for many of us who especially hate swallowing pills, orally taking these pills with water daily can be frustrating. And for some of us who can’t or hate swallowing pills, we just refuse to take pills orally despite the benefits of the medicine.
Scientists believe they may have found a solution to taking pills orally by implanting drugs into our body and delivering our daily dose of medicine at the touch of a smartphone button. This could end the need for daily oral doses of medicine.
Researchers in Sweden have invented a new material that can trap tiny biomolecules used in medication and release them when triggered by an electric pulse. This invention may allow for long-lasting electronic pills to be implanted in tissues or organs and doses given at regular intervals or as needed.
These Electronic Pills will help elderly people who may sometimes forget to take their medicine or people who have mental issues or challenges who might not want to take their medicine despite needing the medicine to regulate their emotional and mental state.
When pills are swallowed orally, they wash through the whole system which can have unwanted side-effects. But by embedding the drug-filled material in the exact location in the body where it is needed could allow much stronger effective doses to be given without damaging other parts of the body.
Gustav Ferrand-Drake del Castillo, the lead author of the study from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, stated “you can imagine a doctor, or a computer program, measuring the need for a new dose of medicine in a patient, and a remote controlled-signal activating the release of the drug from the implant located in the very tissue or organ where it’s needed.”
Gustav further provided that “the development of electronic implants is only one of several conceivable applications. Research that helps us to link electronics with biology at a molecular level is an important piece of the puzzle in such a direction.”
This new material created by scientists can survive the changing acidic and alkaline conditions of the body, and the material is so “thin that it only requires a tiny amount of power provided by a nano-scale electrode, to make it release its cargo.”
Gustav further added that “activation at a molecular level reduces both the energy requirement and the need for moving parts.”
There are several other laboratories that are working on ways to get drugs to specific places in the body without needing the drug to wash through the whole system. Specifically, Stanford University released information about a tiny amphibious robot that can swim through bodily fluid and navigate obstacles to deliver medicine exactly where they need to go. Additionally, Harvard has developed a micro-bot that can swim through bodily fluids using a propeller, driven by a magnetic field outside the body. A university in Germany has designed a biohybrid robot based on swimming sperm cells.
With the convergence of these drug delivery tools and this new material, the Swedish researchers are hopeful that technology could be used to deliver cancer-fighting drugs to the female reproductive tract and have already demonstrated that they can be maneuvered towards a tumor in a dish.
ABOUT THE BLOGGER
La Shon Y. Fleming Bruce a/k/a SHONSPEAKS is a blogger, certified brain health specialist, speaker, and lead creator of https://shonspeaks.org. I am also a lawyer and managing member of The Fleming-Bruce Law Firm, P.L.L.C. If you want to check out more of my writings that may not be released on this site, go over to my website at https://shonspeaks.org .
CHECK OUT MY LATEST NFT FOR YOUR METAVERSE WALL FOR THE FUTURE BY CLICKING BELOW
GRAB YOUR COPY OF ELISABETH HOEKSTRA’S NEW BOOK
Comments