When you donate blood the needle goes into a large, visible vein in your arm or hand but when getting a shot the needle just goes somewhere in your arm.
In: Biology
I’m seeing a frightening amount of misinformation and half-truths that seem specifically written to scare people away from getting injections. Take everything including my post with a grain of salt and listen to doctors for medical advice.
The aim of any drug administration is to get the drug into your bloodstream so it can be delivered to wherever in your body it needs to go. How does it know where to go? The drug is designed to bind specifically in that place and will travel around your body via the bloodstream and bind to its target as it passes through. Does that mean that not all drug gets there? Yes, but that’s fine, the dosing takes that into consideration.
All drug administration eventually leads to getting into your bloodstream and then gets filtered out by your kidneys or metabolized by your liver. The different routes (oral, IV, intramuscular(what OP is asking about) need differing amounts of time to make it into your bloodstream. IV is instantaneous, oral takes one of the longest, and intramuscular is in the middle. If you need a drug that needs to work immediately, like adrenaline, then IV. If you want something that spends a longer time in your body before leaving (which is not a bad thing) then pick a slower route. Blood vessels and capillaries in your muscles absorb the drug absorbed there at a slower rate meaning the full dose doesn’t enter circulation all at once. If it did it might not work at all since it would be processed through your body too quickly.
Source: Pharmaceutical Engineer
Latest Answers