A new medical development inspired by an aquatic worm could replace the need for metal plates and screws in setting some types of broken bones.
If you’ve ever had the misfortune of suffering a broken bone, you might still have a few metal screws and plates inside your body—and isn’t that a blast when it comes time to walk through the airport security line?
But hopefully soon, a broken bone won’t be synonymous with setting off alarms in every shop, thanks to an exciting new medical development that’s inspired by—of all things—aquatic worms.
The new technology is a sophisticated, ultrastrong adhesive glue that could potentially be used to restore the position of broken bones in certain circumstances. The glue is a synthetic compound modeled after the substance that’s naturally emitted by the aquatic worm, which uses it to build underwater castles out of sand and shell fragments. The substance is first secreted as a liquid, then dries to a solid in the water, thanks to a changing pH balance in the ocean atmosphere. In developing the new bone glue, scientists have mimicked the worm’s method, creating a glue that dries to a solid within the human body, but is twice as strong as its worm-made model.
“Going to nature is a nice approach,” Jennifer Elisseeff, a biomedical engineer at Johns Hopkins University, told Discovery News. “Nature has taken a lot of time to evolve and develop these mechanisms.”
This new synthetic is not the first bone glue on the market, but many others have the potential of causing inflammatory reactions. This one doesn’t, making it much more appropriate for general use.
Although screws and plates must still be used in some cases, the new adhesive can serve as an additional reinforcement, and, particularly with broken teeth and facial fractures, can sometimes replace the need for metal altogether. The glue is also biodegradable, so, once the bones no longer need the glue as reinforcement, it will be absorbed into the body with no ill effects.
Scientists are still waiting to trial the new superglue on humans, so it may not be available at your doctor’s office for a while to come. But hopefully, if you do break a bone in the future, this worm-inspired glue will help prevent you from setting off metal detectors in every shop.