Mosquitoes, wasps and parasitic worms could help make injections less painful

Using hypodermicRNA needles to deliver drugs has been common for more than a century. The past hundred years have seen all manner of medical advances, from antibiotics and x-rays to m vaccines and immunological cancer treatments. Yet the needle has stayed mostly unchanged. Although now available in a variety of different sizes, it remains, in essence, a hollow, pointy tube.With luck, that may soon change. As Yichi Ma, a mechanical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues outline in a review paper in , researchers around the world are looking for ways to ease the passage of needles into the skin. Many have been inspired by nature.