How squid could help people get over their needle phobia
Cephalopod ink propulsion is inspiring an alternative to syringes
Needles, THOugh essential for delivering a great many vital medications, are not universally popular among patients. This distaste has serious consequences: an aversion to needles leads one in six American adults to skip vaccinations, and is an important reason why people who rely on injectable drugs such as insulin fail to keep up with their dosage. Now new work led by Giovanni Traverso at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is revealing a way to get medication into patients without having to jab them at all, by copying the jet-propulsion techniques used by squid and their kin.
This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Moving the needle”
From the November 23rd 2024 edition
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