A research paper by the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists (AAPS) at the Annual Meeting and Exposition held in Washington has presented the possibility of using nanoparticles for the delivery of osteoarthritis drugs for knee joints for the retention of the drugs in the knee cavities for a longer period of time.
The study has shown that the injection of nanoparticles into the knee joints helps in retaining the drugs for more than a week. As compared to this, current drugs that are used have the ability to retain the drug only for two or three days.
Osteoarthritis is the most common joint disorder which affects more than 30 million Americans. An additional 20 million Americans are expected to be affected by the disorder by 2025. The main causes of osteoarthritis are obesity, aging, injury in the joints which lead to the erosion of the articular cartilage. The disease occurs frequently in knee joints, hands and spine and hips. At present there are no medications to stop the disease from spreading. For joints of a larger size, a drug is injected into the joints to restrict the side effects. The duration for which the drug stays in the knee cavities presented a great challenge to the treatment of the disease.
In the new process, nanoparticles are charged positively and made to carry a drug. These nanoparticles attach themselves to negatively charged natural molecules and thus form a gel in the knee cavity. This gel prevents the drug from escaping the knee cavity. If doctors succeed in retaining the drug for a longer time period, patients may require injection only once in three months instead of once in a week.
Source: http://www.aaps.org