Scientists Created a 'Self-Plugging' Eye Microneedle, And It's as Creepy as It Sounds

Drugs need to be injected into your eye to treat certain diseases.

There are a lot of things that could go wrong with the process. There's an inflammation of the eye caused bybacteria entering a hole where a needle was inserted.

The eye tissue can be damaged from repeated injections. The newly made hole could be used to spread tumors.

A new, potentially better system for delivering drugs to the eye has been developed by a group of researchers.

Unfortunately for our nightmares, the new technique still uses eye needles.

One of the researchers said that the novel improvement in drug delivery treatment can avoid problems associated with using needles to treat eye diseases.

The scientific term for injecting the eye is "intravitreal injection". It's used to treat a lot of diseases.

A drug called anti-VEGF is injected into the eye to treat it.

The team came up with an ultrathin micro needle that stays in the eye and eventually biodegrades.

The microneedle has a plug to seal up the hole and slowly release the drug into the eye. Below is an illustration of what this would look like.

A graphical representation of the new design. (Lee et al., Advanced Healthcare Materials, 2022)

The researchers tested the new system in a number of ways.

The team injected the needles into the pig's eyes. The hole was sealed after the injection and the drug spread through the eye as expected.

The team put the micro needle into pigs. The tip of the needle was securely lodged in place after the team found no leak or inflammation at the site.

The fluorescent signal of the model drug rhodamine B could be seen even in the deeper tissues of the eye from the tip of a micro needle.

The data shows that the model drug was dispersed through the eye.

There is a long way to go before you could be injected with a micro needle at your local eye doctor. Longer studies in animal models are needed to make sure the design is safe in humans.

This is an exciting find, and may provide a slightly less horrible solution to a very horrible problem.

The research has appeared in a journal.