Figure 4.
Comparison of modeled drug release and experimental determination of in vivo nerve block duration at varied muscle tissue thicknesses. Rats were injected at the sciatic nerve with Lipo-PdPC-TTX and nerve block was monitored with a modified hot plate test (see Methods). Irradiation with a 730 nm light (250 mW/cm2, 10 min) was performed after the initial nerve block was resolved. Tissue thickness was varied by interposing muscle tissue of varied thickness between the rat and the light source. (a) Schematic of irradiation in vivo. (b) Nerve block duration with respect to tissue thickness and comparison with computed cargo release. As the sciatic nerve is located 0.7 cm below the skin, 0.7 cm was the baseline tissue thickness. The modeling from Eqn 19 (see Methods) is on the right axis, experimental data on the left. Data are mean ± std, N=4.