Body heat-powered drug delivering bandages
Researchers at Purdue University's Birck Nanotechnology Center have developed a way to turn Band-Aids into a convenient and pain free alternative to needles. By integrating a tiny heat-powered pump, adhesive patches could automatically deliver medication to a patient without the need for a painful prick.What's most interesting is that the tiny pump isn't packed full of nano-scale sized bleeding-edge technology. Instead, a small chamber sandwiched between layers of flexible polymer is filled with nothing more than sugar and baker's yeast. When the patch is stuck to the skin and moistened, the water and the patient's body heat causes the yeast and sugar to ferment which produces carbon dioxide. And as the CO2 gas causes the chamber to expand, it pushes against the flexible polymer membranes which could one day be covered in microneedles that automatically inject a given type of medication through the skin without the patient ever feeling a thing.
Source: gizmodo.comAdded: 3 October 2012
