I was wondering we aren’t more medicines used in Auto Injectors? Wouldn’t it make the medicine kick in faster and be more efficient due to Bioavailability?
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Auto-injector devices tend to be expensive to make, and are often only designed for a single use since they might be difficult to clean after use
There just aren’t that many medications where extremely urgent delivery of the medication is crucial, and sometimes other routes of administration may be similarly effective.
Oral medications can be very inexpensive to package and deliver, and don’t require any special equipment to use.
There’s nothing stopping them from doing so for a lot of medication other than the high cost of manufacturing a single use auto-injector vs a pill.
It is worth noting that while epipens are very expensive, the mark up on them is insane and arguably amoral. The life saving medication they contain is worth pennies.
Ajovy, Emgality, Aimovig, sumatriptan. Mainly stuff you can’t deliver in pill form. Pills are much cheaper.
I the basic answer is that the least invasive drug delivery mechanism is used whenever possible. Breaking the skin in an injection is just another risk you need to justify whenever trying to put a injection on the market. The risks include infection of injection site, stringent QC requirements all around mfg process, and finally the user has to be typically trained to some extent. You’d be surprised how many people don’t press hard enough and the needle isn’t long enough and the medicine sprays on the skin.
They’re extensively used in the military for stuff like nerve gas antidotes, which was the original application in the first place.
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