Treating Nail Fungus With Nanotechnology

Nail fungus known as Onychomycosis impacts millions of people worldwide causing nail disfigurement, pain, and increased risk of soft tissue infection. Treatments like topical antifungal treatments are available but treatment failure remains high due to a number of factors.

To improve its treatment, Scientists investigated the use of nanotechnology and make it more cost effective. It is noticed that when Efinaconazole is combined with the nitric oxide-releasing nanoparticles, it achieves the same antifungal effects but at a fraction of the amount of the medication alone needed to impart the same effect.

Nanotechnology is being employed to better deliver established imaging and therapeutic agents in medicine and surgery fields to ultimately improve patient outcomes "A quickly emerging roadblock in patient care is, unfortunately, access to medications due to rising cost and poor insurance coverage.”

Combination of Nanoparticle and medication are opening the door to potentially better and more tolerable treatment regimens. The additional benefit is the ability of nanoparticles to access infections in unreachable locations as penetration and retaining activity across the nail plate.

By combining them at a fraction of these concentrations we could impart the same antifungal activity at the highest concentrations tested of either alone. "The impact of this combo, highlighted their synergistic damaging effects at concentrations that would be completely safe to human cells, which we visualized using electron microscopy as compared to either product alone.

"With the results, to determine the efficacy of the treatment in a clinical setting, it is worth further researching the synergy of nitric oxide-releasing nanoparticles and Efinaconazole against onychomycosis.