Abstract
The ability to inject wild animals from a distance using remote drug delivery systems (RDDS) is one of the most effective and humane practices in wildlife management. Several factors affect the successful administration of drugs using RDDS. For example, temperature-dependent viscosity change in aqueous (Newtonian) or water-in-oil emulsion (non-Newtonian) fluids, commonly used in tranquilizer and adjuvant-based vaccines, respectively, can potentially result in drug delivery failure. To better understand impacts due to viscosity changes, we investigated the fluid dynamics and ballistics involved in remote drug delivery. Our research was divided into two phases: we investigated the viscosimetric physics in the first phase to determine the fluid behavior under different temperature settings, simulating recommended storage temperature (7ºC), plus an ambient temperature (20ºC). In the second phase of our study, we assessed the drug delivery efficiency by specialized darts, using a precision CO2 projector and a blowgun. Efficiency assessment was done by comparing the original drug volume with the actual volume injected after firing the dart into a fresh pork hide mounted on a ballistic gel. Before testing, we configured the required minimum impact velocity for our parameters and intramuscular injection (determined as ˃ 40 m/sec). All executed dart-deployments performed satisfactorily, despite initial concerns of potential incomplete drug delivery, however, noteworthy drug loss was observed (˃10%) associated with drug residues in syringe/dart dead space and within the transfer needle. This could potentially result in inaccurate dosing depending on the drug used. Furthermore, the use of a blowgun for remote drug delivery (>3m) is discouraged, especially when using specialized darts, as the required minimum dart velocity for adequate penetration is difficult to reach, in addition to a loss of precision during targeting.
Highlights
The ability to inject wild animals from a distance without the need for physical restraint has many advantages, including logistics, safety, and improved animal welfare
Vaccines developed for wildlife applications have to be highly immunogenic, permitting a single dose application
We investigated if specialized darts for vaccine delivery can be adequately deployed by blowguns
Summary
The ability to inject wild animals from a distance without the need for physical restraint has many advantages, including logistics, safety, and improved animal welfare. Influence the success of drug delivery using a remote drug delivery system (RDDS), including the user’s ability to accurately use RDDS (Cattet et al 2006), ambient influences (weather/light), dart ballistics, and drug solution characteristics. The drug’s specific fluid characteristics can potentially interfere with the delivery efficiency when used in a dart and can be overlooked, especially when it comes to temperature-dependent viscosity (Evans et al 2015). This is an important issue for wildlife vaccines. Waterin-oil emulsions and adjuvants provide such attributes, but depending on temperature, the emulsion’s viscosity (fluid resistance) can be a hindrance if remote drug delivery is to be used for vaccine delivery
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