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Taking a Look at Microneedles

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Microneedles (MNs) were first proposed by Gerstel and Place in a patent as method of percutaneous drug delivery through a number of projections. (Gerstel and Place, 1976). Although it wasn’t possible to make such devices until the 1990’s with the development of microfabrication of technologies with the first paper demonstrating the use of MNs for transdermal drug delivery in 1998 (Henry et al. 1998). MNs consist of an array of micro-projections of different shapes, ranging from 25- 2000um in height all attached to a base. (Donnelly, Singh & Woolfson 2010). Although much research has been done in to the use of MNs for non invasive drug delivery (Donnelly, Singh & Woolfson 2010, Prausnitz 2004, Li et al. 2013, Donnelly et al. 2012). it has also been shown that MNs can be used for the withdrawal of bodily fluid (Wang, Cornwell & Prausnitz 2005, Mukerjee et al. 2004) for analysis which is the purpose of this project. It is possible that micro needles could be used for measuring blood glucose levels in diabetic patients. It was shown that MNs were capable of removing interstitial fluid for in situ detection of glucose (Mukerjee et al. 2004).
The largest barrier to drug delivery in the body is the skin’s stratum corneum which is the outermost layer of the epidermis. Stratum corneum thickness varies from 10-40um and is made up of dead skin cells. The epidermis thickness varies from 50-100um and is located on top of the dermis layer which contains blood vessels and nerves.
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