Department of Biomedical Engineering Posters and Presentations

Ultrasound-Enhanced Drug Delivery for Treatment of Onychomycosis

Poster Number

102

Document Type

Poster

Publication Date

3-2013

Abstract

More than 32 million Americans are currently suffering from onychomycosis—an unattractive and potentially dangerous fungal nail disorder. There is currently no effective treatment for onychomycosis. The oral antifungal drugs take over 6 months to work and have overall failure rates of over 30% along with dangerous side effects including elevated liver function tests and hepatitis. The other current treatment option is the application of antifungal drugs to the top of the nail in a nail polish form. This treatment plan has been preferred by many patients as the drug has only non-serious, infrequently reported side-affects. However, the medicated nail polish also needs to be applied for 6 months and has a low cure rate of only up to 36%. Our hypothesis is that ultrasound application can lead to the increased effectiveness of delivery of topically applied antifungal drugs and reduce the necessary time of application for successful treatment. Our preliminary studies indicate that the use of ultrasound increases nail permeability by 50% for a drug mimicking compound. Additionally, we developed and tested a novel ultrasound device for treatment of onychomycosis that can be used to apply therapeutic ultrasound at different clinically-relevant parameters. Our ongoing research efforts focus on optimizing ultrasound parameters for nail drug delivery by utilizing a diffusion cell setup. People who would benefit the most from this treatment are those in their 60s or older, particularly those who suffer from diabetes, poor circulation, immunosuppressive diseases, or have cancer that is being treated with radiation.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Open Access

1

Comments

Presented at: GW Research Days 2016

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS
 

Ultrasound-Enhanced Drug Delivery for Treatment of Onychomycosis

More than 32 million Americans are currently suffering from onychomycosis—an unattractive and potentially dangerous fungal nail disorder. There is currently no effective treatment for onychomycosis. The oral antifungal drugs take over 6 months to work and have overall failure rates of over 30% along with dangerous side effects including elevated liver function tests and hepatitis. The other current treatment option is the application of antifungal drugs to the top of the nail in a nail polish form. This treatment plan has been preferred by many patients as the drug has only non-serious, infrequently reported side-affects. However, the medicated nail polish also needs to be applied for 6 months and has a low cure rate of only up to 36%. Our hypothesis is that ultrasound application can lead to the increased effectiveness of delivery of topically applied antifungal drugs and reduce the necessary time of application for successful treatment. Our preliminary studies indicate that the use of ultrasound increases nail permeability by 50% for a drug mimicking compound. Additionally, we developed and tested a novel ultrasound device for treatment of onychomycosis that can be used to apply therapeutic ultrasound at different clinically-relevant parameters. Our ongoing research efforts focus on optimizing ultrasound parameters for nail drug delivery by utilizing a diffusion cell setup. People who would benefit the most from this treatment are those in their 60s or older, particularly those who suffer from diabetes, poor circulation, immunosuppressive diseases, or have cancer that is being treated with radiation.