Any mom or dad who has taken a young child to the doctor knows that the sight of a needle induces panic in both patient and parent. Not only that, sticking a child with a needle takes up training time for staff, which risk injury to themselves. The better alternative for children, when possible, is through the nose, where medication delivery is painless and easy to administer. Writing in the Aug. 9 issue of the journal Pediatrics, Dr. Timothy R. Wolfe, from University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, and Darren A. Braude, of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine in Albuquerque, outline the merits of intranasal drug delivery for children. "The highly vascularized nasal mucosa and the olfactory tissue in direct contact with the central nervous system allow nasally administered drugs to be rapidly transported into the bloodstream and brain." That should make everyone breathe a sigh of relief. Abstract