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Wednesday, November 30, 2005But Dr Chan’s study shows that 68 per cent of “intramuscular” injections in the buttocks do not reach the muscle. “The amount of fat tissue overlying the muscles exceeds the length of the needles commonly used for these injections,” she said. They discovered this by injecting 50 patients and including a small air bubble in the injection — perfectly safe as the target site was not a blood vessel. The air bubble was located by CT scans, and the team also measured body mass index, distance to injection site and thickness of fat and muscle. Overall, the success rate of the injections was only 32 per cent. Men, who are naturally leaner in this part of the body, did better than women. More than half (56 per cent) of the injections in men reached the muscle, but in women it was a mere 8 per cent. The drug may not be delivered to the muscle, but it is delivered to the subcutaneous tissues. The question is, has a study like this been done before? When pharmaceutical companies make their injectable drugs, do they actually measure how much gets to the muscle, or did they just assume it did and use instead as their endpoints, the therapeutic results. It just might be that enough of the drug is getting into the system from the subcutaneous tissue to be effective, even though it isn't getting to the muscle. We can't tell from the story, or the research. posted by Sydney on 11/30/2005 06:37:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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