MIT Develops Pill Coated With Tiny Needles To Replace Shots

Shots are strange things — though small in the grand scheme of life and injuries, some of the most hardened folks among us turn jelly-knee'd at the sight of them. Perhaps there is some instinctual association between needles and poisonous stingers. Regardless, MIT has developed a potential solution, and it doesn't sound much more comforting: a pill with micro needles.

The needles-pill was detailed today by MIT News, which says both university researchers and those at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed a special kind of capsule that is coated with super small needles — so-called micro needles — which jab painlessly into the stomach's lining to inject drugs.

This is a compromise between the preference most have for taking pills rather than receiving injections, able to by-pass the effects of stomach acid that prevent some medications from being administered orally. On the upside, studies with this pill thus far show that insulin is better administered with the needle pill than through a skin injection.

In the future, these pills could be used to deliver all sorts of drugs — particularly ones like biologics that pose administration issues. There are no side effects, and though it sounds a bit dystopian in nature, there is no pain. The prototype pill measures in at 2 centimeters in length and has needles measuring in at 5 millimeters long. Tests have been done on pigs, and now the pill will be modified to be more efficient.

VIA: Gizmodo