People get tattoos for a variety of reasons, and many of those people are proud of the art that they’ve permanently inked on their skin. However, whether it’s a tattoo of your ex’s name, a botched portrait of your pet, or even a quote you’ve outgrown, there are plenty of people with plenty of reasons for wanting their tattoos removed.
Alec Falkenham, a 27-year-old researcher at Dalhousie University in Halifax, is working on developing a topical cream that would help fade tattoo ink from skin. The cream would target the white blood cells, called microphages, which are filled with ink from the tattoo. However, Falkenham says that the cream will be more effective on tattoos that are two years and older.
According to the American society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, tattoo removal is on the rise, and the money paid for tattoo removal treatments doubled from 2011 to 2013. As of 2013, the national average for tattoo removal treatments cost $588.
Falkenham’s cream is estimated to cost $4.50 for a 10-by-10 centimeter area per treatment, and would allow more people access to tattoo removal treatments who otherwise could not afford the more expensive laser removal procedures. Current laser removal techniques are also very painful and often result in blisters, scarring, and inflammation. The cream would act as an anti-inflammatory agent, which would avoid unnecessary scarring.
“When comparing it to laser-based tattoo removal, in which you see the burns, the scarring, the blisters, in this case, we’ve designed a drug that doesn’t really have much off-target effect,” Falkenham told CBC News Canada.
The topical treatment is still being developed, and at this point, the cream has only been tested on pig’s ears. For now Falkenham is unsure when the treatment will be available commercially, but continues to work on refining the solution to make it safe and effective on humans.
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This Cream Will Erase All Your Tattoo Regrets is a post from: LifeDaily
