Kids Web Japan

Painful injections using needles may soon become a thing of the past!

Medicine can be given by pressing a pointed micro-mini capsule into the skin.

It doesn't hurt because it doesn't reach down as far as the nerves.

The capsule itself completely dissolves after "injection" and is absorbed into the body.

Enlarged photo of a micro-mini capsule

The capsule and its contents are made from medicine and substances that already exist in the human body.

Any kind of medicine can be added.

The micro-mini capsule introduced here is being developed by Professor Kanji Takada of Kyoto Pharmaceutical University. It is called a "self-dissolving micromissile capsule."

(Updated in July 2008)