Antibiotic Gel Squirted Into the Ear Could Provide a One Dose Cure for Ear Infections
A single-application bioengineered gel, squirted in the ear canal, could deliver a full course of antibiotic therapy for middle ear infections, making treatment of this common childhood illness much easier and potentially safer, finds a preclinical study led by Boston Children’s Hospital in collaboration with investigators at Boston Medical Center and Massachusetts Eye and Ear. The findings were published September 14 by the journal Science Translational Medicine.
“Force-feeding antibiotics to a toddler by mouth is like a full-contact martial art,” says Daniel Kohane, MD, PhD, the study’s senior investigator and director of the Laboratory for Biomaterials and Drug Delivery at Boston Children’s.
“With oral antibiotics, you have to treat the entire body repeatedly just to get to the middle ear,” says Rong Yang, PhD, a chemical engineer in Kohane’s lab and first author on the paper. “With the gel, a pediatrician could administer the entire antibiotic course all at once, and only where it’s needed.”
Funding: Funding was provided by the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (U.S. Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity subcontract #W81XWH-09-2-0001), the Shereta Seelig Charitable Foundation Trust, the National Institutes of Health (DC015050) and the Department of Anesthesia at Boston Children’s Hospital.
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