Print your own medicine to treat nail infections

A DRUG-INFUSED ‘ink’ might offer a new way to combat fungal nail infections.

The usual treatment is a pill or cream containing the drug terbinafine.

Now researchers at University College London have put the antifungal drug into an ink, which is then loaded in a nail printer — a widely available device used in salons to print a pattern on to the nail.

While other topical treatments such as gels and patches are being developed, they don’t allow the patient to control the drug dose as precisely as with a printer, reports the journal Pharmaceutics.