Drug delivery system slowly releases pain-relieving nerve block over weeks

edited by Sadie Harley , reviewed by Robert Egan

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Add as preferred source Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Most local anesthetics used in medicine last only eight to 12 hours, or a day at most. Now, Boston Children's Hospital researchers have formulated a more effective slow-release injectable drug delivery system that achieved pain-numbing anesthetic effects lasting two to three weeks in rats, compared with a commercial formulation lasting about four to eight hours.

Given that nerve blocks in humans tend to work longer than in rats, this advancement, published in Nature Biomedical Engineering , could substantially extend the effective duration of currently used anesthetics and have implications for other types of pain.