Dermal patch
medicated adhesive patch delivers medication into the skin
A dermal patch or skin patch is a medicated adhesive patch placed on human skin to deliver a medication into the skin. This is in contrast to a transdermal patch, which delivers the medication through the skin and into the bloodstream.
Popular uses
Flector (diclofenac epolamine) patch is an NSAID topical patch for the treatment of acute pain due to minor strains, sprains, and contusions. It is also being used in the treatment of pain and inflammation for chronic conditions benefiting from NSAIDs, including fibromyalgia and arthritis.
Lidocaine patches, marketed as Lidoderm, relieve the peripheral pain of shingles (herpes zoster). It became commonly used off-label, for pain from acute injuries and chronic pain, although limited by its requirement to be removed for 12 hours, after 12 hours of use.
Some experimental studies investigate the use of ceramic dermal patches for local antibiotic delivery to contaminated commercial skin graft patches, and antibiotic dermal patches to deliver local antibiotic to the gum after dental surgery.
Innovative biomaterials
Silks
Spider silk
Research
In 2016, a study from the University of Nottingham was published describing the first synthetic spider silk that is functionally identical to naturally spun spider silk. Using non-natural methionine analog L-azidohomoalanine (L-Aha) and genetically modified E-Coli cells, self-assembling proteins under the conditions needed to create the filament were produced. These conditions had been researched years earlier by J. Johansson and co-workers studying the production of spider silk proteins.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Dermal patch” as medicated adhesive patch delivers medication into the skin. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as medicated adhesive patch delivers medication into the skin. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5262671. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dermal patch” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.