The new battery operated plaster that carries medication through the skin is the newest treatment to fight crippling migraines. The new device by using electrical current push drugs directly into the bloodstream. It will help thousands of migraine sufferers who experience side effects like nausea due to oral medications.
The single use plaster is put on the upper arm the moment suffer feels an attack beginning. Millions of people have migraine attacks with women three times more prone to be affected than men. The symptoms of migraine may include nausea, vomiting and extreme sensitivity o light and sound. The attacks of migraine are more severe than normal headache.
These attacks can last for anything between four hours to three days. The most frequently prescribed treatments are triptans, drugs that work by narrowing blood vessels in the head. The blood vessels in the head broaden abruptly at the start of migraine and arousing the symptoms.
The use of triptans causes side effects when taken orally, including drowsiness, nausea, dry mouth and chest stiffness. However, with the new electronic plaster known as Zelrix transdermal patch, the medicine goes through skin directly into the bloodstream. The Zelrix transdermal patch contains two small reservoirs, with a small battery, analogous to that on a watch, fixed in between them.
One reservoir contains the medication molecules, having electrical positive charge and the other contains salt with negative charge. While, fixing Zelrix transdermal patch on the upper arm and current is applied, the drug molecules are pulled out of the reservoir into the skin. The positively charged drug molecules are attracted towards the negatively charged salt reservoir due to electrical current.
In a study trail that involved more than five hundred migraine sufferers aged eighteen to sixty, were given Zelrix or a placebo patch. The results of the study showed that higher number of patient treated with Zelrix experience relief in migraine headache just one hour after the patch was switched on.
After two hours of the treatment more than fifty-three percent were felt pain free in comparison to twenty-nine percent treated with placebo.