Solving needle stress for kids

A small sticker applied to the skin could take the pain and fear out of sedating children for medical procedures.

Tens of thousands of Kiwi tamariki are admitted to hospital each year. Many will require potentially distressing or painful procedures performed under sedation – which makes a child feel sleepy and calm, reducing their awareness and memory.

Many common sedative medicines are injected into the vein, or inhaled through a mask or tubes in the nose, which can be distressing in itself.

But a group of Kiwi researchers hope microneedles – tiny needles, as thin as human hair, usually attached to a sticky patch that can deliver medicines through the skin – will change the game.

Because microneedles are so small, they do not reach pain receptors deeper in the skin, meaning they are painless compared to traditional needles, Dr Manisha Sharma, an expert in novel drug delivery systems from the University of Auckland, said.

They are also relatively effortless to apply, like putting on a plaster or sticker.

Improving sedation in emergency departments and prior to surgery was the impetus for the research, as ‘‘no-one wants to see their child going through distress’’.

Sharma, alongside Dr Nicola Whittle, an anaesthetist at Waikato Hospital, Dr Martyn Harvey, an emergency physician at Waikato Hospital, and Dr Brian Anderson, a University of Auckland professor, plan to design and evaluate a dissolvable microneedle patch loaded with sedative.

Their research was still in the ‘‘very early’’ stages, Sharma said.

Once they establish proof of concept, it could take more than a year to develop a prototype. They will then test the patch in rats to ensure it is safe and effective, before moving into human trials.

Part of the proof-of-concept stage will involve investigating getting the patches loaded with the drug and the mechanism of drug release and absorption into the body.

Microneedle technology, including dissolvable patches, is already used for cosmetic purposes, and researchers around the world are looking at how they can be used to deliver different drugs, Sharma said.

If their project works, it ‘‘definitely’’ has wider scope, and could be used in other ways, she said.

There is precedent for microneedles to be used for bigger things.

Research by two American universities published in The Lancet medical journal in 2017 found a microneedle patch was a safe and effective way to deliver the flu vaccine in a 100-person stage one trial.

An Australian professor developed ‘Nanopatch’, a small square of silicone stuck on the skin, which delivers vaccine into the body, and last September, researchers developed a microneedle patch that delivered a Covid-19 DNA vaccine into the skin, which showed strong immune responses in cells and mice.

The project was one of nine chosen to receive a project grant from Cure Kids in 2021.