Antibiotic gel treats middle ear infections with a single dose

Treating bacterial infections takes days to treat, but a new antibiotic gel requires only a single dose to attack middle ear infections.

Middle ear infections are the most prominent bacterial infections in children, causing 16 million visits to the doctor a year in America. Most treatments involve taking oral antibiotics up to 10 days but with a new antibiotic gel, ear infections can be treated in a single dose.

Researchers from Boston Children's Hospital in collaboration and Boston Medical Center and Massachusetts Eye and Ear developed the gel which is acquired into the ear canal and hardens to stay in place. Over time, the hardened gel dispenses the medication through the eardrum into the middle ear.

Previous drug therapies were incapable of passing through the eardrum; this gel uses chemical permeation enhancers that insert themselves into the membrane and open molecular pores to flow across the eardrum. In animal testing, the gel cured ear infections in 10 out of 10 animals while tests using conventional ear drops only treated five of eight infections.

"Transtympanic delivery of antibiotics to the middle ear has the potential to enable children to benefit from the rapid antibacterial activity of antimicrobial agents without systemic exposure and could reduce emergence of resistant microbes," said Stephen Pelton, MD, a pediatric infectious disease physician at Boston Medical Center.