Vaccinations could be made less painful by treating skin with a vaccine-laden liquid and using ultrasound to push it into the body
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.
Hilariously enough, it's closer to the other way 'round. Higher frequencies means more bandwidth but they can be blocked easier. Lower frequencies can go farther before being attenuated too much.
Idk, anti vaxxers aren't afraid of needles/syringes as far as I understand. They don't want that kind of substance to be put inside their body, regardless of the method of administration
I mean, yes, but a lot of them also think it's a conspiracy where world leaders are trying to vaccinate everyone because ??? Those types will start avoiding ultrasound to not get tricked into getting vaccinated.
My favorite anecdote, though not necessarily mine, about jet inoculation comes from the army. They had long lines of men to immunize and little time to do it. Walk up, hold still, hear the click, feel the water pierce you, walk away sore. However, if anyone moved even slightly during the process, the needle of water becomes a knife, slicing their shoulder open. It was not a well thought out mechanism.
Since vaginal ultrasound is how they detect a "fetal heartbeat" at 6 weeks (the heart isn't yet formed or pushing any blood, but there's an electronic pulse) at which point abortion is illegal in many states, that might be a good thing.
Although, as ultrasound is also how my overdue fetus was diagnosed with the umbilical cord wrapped 3x around the neck, leading to a quick C-section and healthy baby, I would rather keep the ultrasound machines and lose the lunatics.
At this point if it was possible to orchestrate some massive conspiracy to vaccinate people en masse, we should just do that. They'll shout about it either way, but this way they'll at least be vaccinated
History proves we do the cheapest, easiest, and fastest. So allow me to shit all over this idea...
This is slow at 1.5 mins vs a needle takes about 5 secs.
Takes skill to operate an ultrasound machine and probably training to get a consistent dose vs pull needle to this line and jab in arm to know you got it all in there.
Every Rite Aid and CVS would need an ultrasound machine vs here are these cheap disposable needles that require no power or maintenance.
Sure they might develop it faster or make a new more portable thing. But that's going to take a long long time when no one gives a shit to invest money in a new thing when needles work.
No one is suggesting this be put in practice in its current form, that would be insane. That said, this is a good first step for alternative forms of vaccination. “First step” being the important part.
A machine that produces ultrasonic waves is not that complex. It’s the sensors and qualified technician to read and capture the scans that’s expensive.
Plus have you ever had to physically restrain your child through a needle shot? You said “easiest” and that shit ain’t easy.
You seem to be the only commenter here who recognizes that this would be amazing for pediatric patients - who coincidentally receive way more vaccines than adults.
1.5min really isn't that long compared to the procedures just to process insurance, identity, etc. Retrieving needles, etc. This only needs the topical vaccine, an ultrasound machine, and a wipe for the machine.
When this goes mainstream it'll be a little device with cutout so you can apply it flawlessly to the upper arm. Ultrasounds need training to get readable data, but probably a LOT less just to apply ultrasound to an area.
Needles will still be king anywhere in the developing world. It'll be more expensive initially, but with the mass production the price will go down. And there will be small cost savings to not having to deal with sharps and biohazards as often.
There's more to full sedation than just "scared of dentists", but it's a start. Anyone who needs substantial work can get it done in 1 day on full sedation instead of a dozen shorter sessions. yes, "needs substantial work" often relates to "scares of dentists" (or relates to "was too damn poor for dentists")
And I'm with you on hyper-hypodermic-phobia thing. People don't realize that "fear of needles" does not manifest as a phobia, but as an acute body response. Getting a shot ruins me for a week, and often involves a doctor's time because my vasovagal symptoms tend to need a little more expert observation. About 1/3 of the time I stop breathing for a short time. I've never needed life-saving measures, but they need to make sure that's the case (lol).
So for doctor's offices, it could easily become savings for them because of people who have responses to needles.
I'd like to be an optimist when it comes to things like this, some people really really can't stand needles and something like this would be great for them people. I hope it develops further.
I think it depends. I went to an ER once that threw me into a wheelchair when the world was spinning post-blood-draw and dropped me off in the hall saying "You'll be fine!". That hospital will never get an Ultrasound injector.
When I got my first COVID vax, however, I took up 20 minutes of the time of 2 on-call doctors and a nurse because my passing out often resembles a seizure. And then I took up one of their very few "just in case" beds for close to 90 minutes. Someone else with a problem with needles waiting for a vax had to wait for the bed to open up. They'd have killed to have said ultrasound injector for people like me.
Hyposprays already were invented, mass produced, used as standard in the military for several years, and abandoned because they weren't as hygienic as needles.
Anything that pushes through the skin into the blood pushes pathogens in too. Statistically, needles were safer so hyposprays were abandoned.
Miniatyrize ultrasound part, make it communicare with those glucose sensors that are placed on shoulder, make it portable enough and Presto! Artificial pancreas.
There's type 1 and 2 diabetes. I believe type 2 requires you to regularly prick your fingers to test your blood sugar levels several times a day while type 1 requires mandatory insulin shots into your stomach a few times a day. Basically a diabetic fuckin hates needles for good reason and to be able to do that with ultrasound would be rad.
It could be that if vaccines can be attached to a "cup-like protein" and given through the skin, than maybe insulin could too. Just less needle sticks overall
The pancreas is an organ which produces a hormone called insulin, which regulates the intake of sugar from the blood.
In type 1 diabetics, the pancreas has been damaged by an autoimmune reaction, so they need to monitor their blood sugar and administer insulin to the blood using external equipment.
This can be done manually with a needle and glucose tester for measuring blood sugar, and a syringe for administering insulin, or an insulin pump and continuous glucose monitor, which adhere to the skin and have continuous access to the blood through a cannula.
Being able to administer insulin without a needle or cannula would eliminate a common point of failure in this system. The cannula of an insulin pump can easily become dislodged from the skin when disturbed and leak insulin onto the surface, resulting in high blood sugar and wasted insulin.
Sitting for a minute and a half, not including prep and cleanup, or just getting stabbed a little. shrug
Edit: To save the next half dozen people exclaiming "needles!" the trouble. I would refine my point to, "great to have the option but I imagine it as being more of a fallback than the beginning of a new era".
Needle phobias are extremely common, and the thing about phobias is that you're fully aware that the fear isn't coming from a rational place, which is part of what makes them so frustrating to deal with.
It's certainly less time effective if administering vaccines to large populations at once, but the increased antibody generation could absolutely make it worth it. Don't know much about these things, but could mean the difference between two jabs and one 1.5 minute appointment.
Maybe one way of looking at it might be : this would be safe enough you could trust people to self-administer, and you could therefore take the professional with the needle out of the equation.
90 seconds of one person's time has got to be better than the quick jab by two people, no?
Depending on how specific the injection needs to be, there are a number of scenarios in which people can self-administer injections. So, ignoring people who physically can't self-administer, it isn't that dramatic a change.
I can't help but feel that the professional would be even more necessary to administer this correctly and not just waste a treatment/dose doing it wrong, whilst under the illusion that you did it right. Along with the specialised equipment needed for it in the first place. Needles and doses at least are pretty easily self-contained and if it is suitable for self application just "pointy end goes in fat bit of you".
Naturally it's early days, so it'll be fascinating to see how this develops.
Sweet, now they can charge me $1k for a shot and not use a needle.
Last time I got an ultrasound the hospital charged me $2k. Wanted to confirm nothing was wrong with my kidneys. Turns out I was all good, but now I have an expensive bill to deal with...
$2k is largely the doctors time for the procedure, plus interpretation (sometimes another doctor entirely, particularly when multiple opinions are warranted).
Of course, the equipment probably isn't cheap either
Edit - damn. Looks like I was very wrong on this one!
90-95% of imaging cost is the technical fee. An ultrasound is usually 0.5 to 1.0 RVUs roughly. So let's say 1. The RVU rate for radiologists right now is around $45-60 an RVU. So of the $2k for the ultrasound, a Radiologist will make about $50 of it.
In my recent experience, that wasn’t the case. Ultrasound at the ER was $370 for the contracted radiologist. And a whipping $1700 for a 5 minute use of the machine.
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.
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.
Maybe you can help this make sense for me, as no one else has. We all know the government has proven to be corrupt, regardless of which party is in charge. We also know that Big Pharma is corrupt as hell too. Their goal is to keep us sick because healthy people don't buy medicine. Now all of a sudden when they both say "Here take this shot otherwise you'll kill grandma" we're supposed to believe they have our best interest in mind? Like, why now? Why am I supposed to trust that what they say is safe and effective is actually that? I mean, drugs that have been used and studied for decades have been pulled of the shelf because it turns out it does more harm than good. It's also been proven that the covid vaccine isn't nearly as effective that they were touting.
They will say that ultrasounds is how they update the chips that are already in-vaccinated, to include new ways the deep state can control the population.
But the microchips are already equipped with 5G (and it even amplifies it, this is why our cell phone coverage is so good). Surely they can just push an OTA update, right?
They will make up stories that ultra sounds scans is a nefarious way of vaccinating you without consent and consequently refusing to go to important checkups.
They're incredibly predictable. Just pretend to barely understand the subject matter, then invent the most alarmist way of misunderstanding it.
No time to waste, need to stock up on aluminum foil!
(Seriously though this is going to go off the rails quick. I know someone who put their phone in the microwave just to avoid it getting the emergency broadcast system test. "I don't trust anything about FEMA")
I had a friend who would have severe reactions to injections. He wasn't afraid of needles, but his body would have weird reactions lasting about a week after having an injection. It was really problematic, so he tried to avoid them whenever possible. All this to say, I bet he'd be excited if something like this were made available to him.
Had a class mate in elementary school that literally ram screeming when we were getting out hepititis shots. This would be great for someone's like that who is very much afraid of needles
The mRNA shots are very sensitive. I'm not allowed to shake them prior to administration, only swirl gently. I feel like this tech will damage them no?
Im sure they’d have to develop something that would be compatible. It’s in the early stages, but it looks like a cool idea even if it isn’t practical for every application.
Probably not, theres been some needleless vaccines before that did ok. If anyone has done time in the military you're probably familiar. Also any loss in efficacy could probably just be offset with higher concentrations
Notwithstanding but I read about this, or something similar to this years ago, I want to say something seven or eight, and we're still in the same phase with this tech.
This is what I was thinking when reading the title. That one supposedly was cool, because there was no needle, never seen one in action but I presume there also was no bleeding.
Yet we don't see them used today, apparently the biggest reason was that there was a splashback and retrograde follow and then patient's blood could end up contaminating the nozzle, so basically it was like using the same needle on multiple patients.
Intramuscular always caused me soreness, except maybe once. I don’t know what that nurse did differently, I felt the needle sink in, and it hurt; but there was near-zero residual soreness.
I know a person IRL that is morbidly afraid of needles, they would have a panic attack just seeing others getting poked. And apparently they have a self-help group somewhere, so they are definitely not alone.
Yeah, vaccine like these can definitely save their live.
It's really good that the media really managed to communicate to people that antivaxers are the enemy of everyone now.
When I think of an antivaxer, I imagine it's some creature that we don't normally see, because they are so ugly, stupid and insane that they wouldn't be able to function in society without a lot of help getting their pants on in the morning.
I mean, imagine going against the specific advice of all those experts and NOT taking the vaccine?? That's like putting a gun to the head of grandma who just wants to live her last few days in happiness, and then that stupid antivaxer just kills her! So evil.
I'm thankful we live in a society where we now can be confident what is true, because it's very clearly being communicated to all of us, all the time. Who can miss that?? It's like everywhere! Stupid antivaxers, hope they all die off like the poison on society they all are.
At first, the ultrasound pushed the mixture into the upper layers of skin, where the shape of the proteins caused vaccine-filled bubbles to form. As ultrasound kept hitting the skin, those bubbles burst and released the vaccine. As the experiment went on, the action of the bubbles breaking also cleared some dead skin cells, making the skin more permeable and allowing more and more vaccine molecules make it through.
A needle pushes vaccine molecules all the way into the muscles beneath the skin, while the ultrasound technique just delivers the vaccine to the upper layers of skin. But this more shallow process is sufficient for immunisation, says Dunn-Lawless.
In tests with live mice, the researchers found that while the ultrasound method delivered 700 times fewer molecules of vaccine than conventional jabs, the animals produced more antibodies. The researchers say that the mice didn’t show signs of pain and there was no visible damage to their skin.
Neat. I'm wondering about the effectiveness with thicker skin in humans.
The principles of bodily autonomy support the moron, unfortunately. Forcing something into the body of another against their will is generally considered a deplorable act, and makes the forcer criminally liable for any harm that arises.
I'm certainly not anti-vax, but I can't find a philosophically sound justification for forcibly vaccinating an individual.
If you don’t update your computer security, you might be email out viruses to your contacts without even knowing. Is it their responsibility not to get infected or is the responsibility ultimately on you to stay updated?
Terrible analogy. Human lives and computer systems are not really comparable. Pretty sure the responsibility of keeping each computer free of virus falls on the users of those terminals or the IT department managing it.
Has a security update ever done more harm than the virus that it's trying to stop?
Check r/vaccinelonghaulers in reddit for more information.
COVID has a very high survival rate without intervention. Early treatment with a few drugs proved to be more efficacious on saving lives. Intubation and Remdesevir killed more people than it helped.
And, at least in the US, many of us who are against the mRNA gene therapies will literally as in actually fight to the death those Nazis who are into force injecting things into people.
I will; however, continue to pray for all those who received doses that they don't succumb to cardiac myopathies, blood clots, or strokes.
So many people that had the shots are struggling with perpetual pneumonias. It's sad.
Someone being a vegan doesn't exactly put other people at risk.
Where does other peoples' freedom start? Do you also have the freedom to burn toxic materials in your backyard, where your neighbours can inhale the smoke? Because proper disposal of toxic waste is much more similar to getting vaccinated than your metaphor.