Do you and/or your partner hate using condoms during sex? Are you worried about being on birth control pills for too long?
Well science may have something for you - A male contraceptive pill with 99 percent success at preventing pregnancy and no observed side effects.
The 'male contraceptive pill', which you may have seen on your favourite news site or social media is a very real, non-hormonal, scientific formulation called GPHR-529 or YCT529.
The contraceptive was developed by Md Abdullah al Noman, a PhD candidate at the University of Minessota, and Gunda Georg, the director of the Institute of Therpeutics and Discovery.
Currently the compound has been successfully tested on mice and induced sterility with no side-effects. Four weeks after the mice were taken off the compound, their fertility and sterility returned to normal levels, with them being able to reproduce again.
So When Can We Get The Male Contraceptive Pill?
The pill is set to undergo human trials this year, before any talk of commercial availability. While this isn't the first attempt at making a male contraceptive pill, GPHR-529 or YCT529 has proved to be 99 percent effective in dropping sperm count and inducing sterility in mice.
The pill also stands out from others since it's a non-hormonal contraceptive that targets interactions with Vitamin A rather than induce hormonal changes.
Vitamin A is an essential part of fertility, and limiting its interaction induces a drop in sperm count, according to Noman.
Hormonal changes can lead to a plethora of problems including weight gain and mood swings.
However, we're far from getting the pill, since it's only likely to start human trials later in 2022.
Noman and Georg have licensed their compound to YourChoice Therapeutics to conduct human trials.
This isn't the first male contraceptive pill or the only one under trial at the moment.
In 2018, researchers used an extract from a plant used as a heart-stopping poison to stop the movement of sperm. This contraceptive is still being studied.
Another male contraceptive gel is also currently at the clinical trial stage.
So, it'll be a while before we see a commercial formulation of the male contraceptive pill. If at all we see one, that is.
Till then, just use a condom.
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