Medical Design Briefs - September 2023 - 20

Hydrogels are used as a
construction material in contact
lenses due to their skin-friendly
composition and high water content.
(Credit: lolostock/iStock)
Hydrogels
as a
Drug-Delivery
Medium
H
20
ydrogels are soft, hydroactive materials that have
many applications within healthcare. The medical
device industry, in particular, has long used hydrogels
as integral components in wound dressings.
Hydrogels can be cooling to treat burns, absorptive
to manage exudate, and transparent enough to easily
monitor wounds.
More recently, hydrogels have been used in more advanced
medical fields such as tissue engineering, neural regeneration,
and medical implantation applications. This article focuses on
using hydrogels for targeted drug delivery, an area that has
seen a lot of advances in recent years.
Hydrogel dressings have long been dosed with active ingredients
to impart useful properties to the skin. A hydrogel could
contain aloe vera extracts to add soothing and healing properties
to a burn dressing. Natural antimicrobial agents can be incorporated
to prevent infection on a wound bed.
More recently, hydrogels have been used as a carrier to deliver
medication onto a patient's skin. The benefit of this approach
is that the dose rate can be controlled over a period of
time. A medication will slowly migrate out of the gel and onto
the patient's skin. The release will happen over the course of a
day, providing a slow but steady feed of a drug. This approach
avoids the need for careful and repeated drug applications, allowing
a steady and long-term dose rate instead.
Ocular Drug Delivery
The idea of using hydrogels as a slow-release device for
drug delivery been advanced further with the advent of medicated
contact lenses. Traditionally, eye drops are used to deliver
medication to the eyes. This is an inefficient drug-delivery
system; around 95 percent of the medication is lost through
tear drainage. Improving this delivery system can reduce
waste and bring costs down for patients.1
Hydrogels are already used as a construction material in
contact lenses due to their skin-friendly composition and
high water content. A hydrogel dosed with active ingredients
- including treatments for glaucoma - can provide
more effective drug delivery. Not only does this reduce the
amount of wasted active ingredients, but it also provides a
longer-term release of the medication. This longer-term release
has been shown to improve compliance in what can
otherwise be a frequent and complicated eye dosing regimen
for patients.
Drug Release Through Gel Degradation
Hydrogels are not only useful for topical drug delivery. They
can also be utilized to deliver medication within the body.
There are many mechanisms for drug release, the simplest being
the natural swelling and breakdown of the gel releasing the
drug over time.
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Medical Design Briefs, September 2023
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Medical Design Briefs - September 2023

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