RH Reality Check » male contraceptive pill http://rhrealitycheck.org News, commentary and analysis for reproductive and sexual health and justice. Fri, 14 Mar 2014 23:41:19 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.1 This Week in Sex: Meningitis Outbreak Update, Viagra Cures Menstrual Cramps, and a Male Birth Control Pill http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/12/10/this-week-in-sex-meningitis-outbreak-update-viagra-cures-menstrual-cramps-and-a-male-birth-control-pill/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=this-week-in-sex-meningitis-outbreak-update-viagra-cures-menstrual-cramps-and-a-male-birth-control-pill http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/12/10/this-week-in-sex-meningitis-outbreak-update-viagra-cures-menstrual-cramps-and-a-male-birth-control-pill/#comments Tue, 10 Dec 2013 19:29:15 +0000 http://rhrealitycheck.org/?p=29501
New research suggests that the little blue pill for men may be able to stop menstrual cramps in women.
This week, an update on meningitis outbreaks at Princeton and the University of California, Santa Barbara; new research suggests that the little blue pill for men may be able to stop menstrual cramps in women; and after making mice infertile, researchers in Australia think they may have the key to a male birth control pill.

Image: Blue pills via Shutterstock

The post This Week in Sex: Meningitis Outbreak Update, Viagra Cures Menstrual Cramps, and a Male Birth Control Pill appeared first on RH Reality Check.



Princeton Begins Meningitis Vaccinations, Another Outbreak Emerges in California

As RH Reality Check recently reported, Princeton University applied for and received a waiver from the Food and Drug Administration to begin providing a European meningitis vaccine that has not yet been approved for use in this country. An outbreak of the disease, which causes an inflammation of the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord, began with a few cases on campus in March and surprisingly did not end, despite most students leaving school for the summer. So far eight people at Princeton have been infected.

Students at Princeton, like at many other colleges in the country, are required to be vaccinated against meningitis, but the U.S. vaccine only covers sero-groups A,C,Y, and W-135; the current outbreak is caused by sero-group B. Starting this week, students were able to receive the European vaccine, which guards against this strain. Those who get the shot will need to return for a second dose in February. The university is paying to import the vaccine and providing it to students free of charge.

Across the country, at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California (UCSB), students, parents, and administrators are watching events at Princeton carefully, as it is also facing an outbreak caused by sero-group B. So far, four students at UCSB have become ill. One of them, Aaron Loy, a freshman lacrosse player, had both of his feet amputated because of the illness. He remains in the hospital and is facing more surgeries.

The seriousness of Loy’s condition underscores the real danger of this disease, which is easily spread through coughs, shared food or drink, and other close contact like kissing. Though meningitis is rare and can be cured with antibiotics, about one in ten people infected will die from the disease, and 20 percent of those who survive suffer long-term health effects, including loss of limbs, hearing loss, and mental retardation.

Given these outcomes, many students and parents are wondering why UCSB has not also begun to vaccinate students. Thomas Clark, a specialist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) who is overseeing the vaccination process as Princeton, explained to NBC News that every outbreak of meningitis is different, but most end after about four cases, which is how many UCSB has seen. The Princeton outbreak was deemed more dangerous because it reached eight cases and did not wane despite the extended summer break.

Clark says the CDC is keeping a close eye on the UCSB outbreak and that university officials and CDC representatives will decide if and when it seems necessary to start vaccinating students. In the meantime, more than 500 students who were in close contact with the four who got sick have received antibiotics as a way to prevent infection.

Though both outbreaks are of the same strain of the virus, they have different genetic “fingerprints” and do not appear to be related.

Viagra for Cramps?

For many women, menstruation is accompanied by lower abdominal cramps that can be quite severe at times. Women often reach for over-the-counter painkillers, like ibuprofen, or those marketed specifically for period pain like Midol or Pamprin (which offer differing combinations of aspirin, acetaminophen, caffeine, and diuretics). New research, however, suggests that the cure might be in the same little blue pill that made erectile dysfunction (ED) a household name.

In a study published in Human Reproduction, researchers from Penn State College of Medicines used sildenafil citrate—known to you and me as Viagra—on women with primary dysmenorrhea (PD), which is the medical term for recurrent menstrual cramps not caused by any underlying diseases. According to the researchers, ED drugs have been tried on pelvic pain before, and while they worked when taken orally, many women got bad headaches as a side effect. This time researchers administered the drug through vaginal suppositories.

The study involved 25 PD sufferers between the ages of 18 and 35. Half were given the sildenafil citrate and half a placebo. They were then monitored for four hours. The researchers found that after two hours the group given the drug scored significantly lower on one index designed to measure uterine contractions (which cause cramps and pain). Moreover, patients in this group reported that their pain had been alleviated and did not report any side effects.

Interestingly, the mechanism by which sildenafil citrate works is not clear. Researchers thought the drug would sooth pain by increasing blood flow, which is how it helps men achieve erections. They found that the drug did increase blood flow to the uterus, but that the placebo drug did so as well. They cannot yet explain why both drugs increased blood flow but only one alleviated pain.

The study was small and needs to be replicated with a larger sample, but researchers still believe the results are important. Dr. Richard Legro, who led the study, told Medical News Today, ”If future studies confirm these findings, sildenafil citrate may become a treatment option for patients with PD. Since PD is a condition that most women suffer from and seek treatment for at some points in their lives, the quest for new medication is justified.”

Of Mice and Men and Male Contraceptives

Researchers in Australia believe they are one step closer to a male contraceptive pill, after having made male mice infertile. Scientists were able to genetically modify the mice in order to block two proteins that are responsible for moving sperm during ejaculation. The mice were able to have sex normally and ejaculate, but there were no sperm in the ejaculate. The lead researcher of the study, which was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Scienceexplained it this way to the Australian press: “The sperm is effectively there, but the muscle is just not receiving the chemical message to move it.”

The treatment had no negative impact on the long-term viability of sperm in the mice, and researchers believe it would be completely reversible in men as well. In order to translate this success into humans, however, researchers will have to replicate the genetic modification they did in the mice with a chemical process. Despite this remaining hurdle, they believe that they can develop a pill for men based on these findings within the next ten years.

Image: Blue pills via Shutterstock


Better Birth Control for Men: 8 Promising Possibilities http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/10/02/better-birth-control-for-men-8-promising-possibilities/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=better-birth-control-for-men-8-promising-possibilities http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/10/02/better-birth-control-for-men-8-promising-possibilities/#comments Wed, 02 Oct 2013 20:57:35 +0000 http://rhrealitycheck.org/?p=25182
We all, men and women alike, should be demanding better birth control for men.

Image: Contraception via Shutterstock

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When Mary hit middle school, she began having such painful periods that her father once called the paramedics, thinking she had a ruptured appendix. But at age 14, she got a state-of-the-art hormonal intrauterine device (IUD) that cured her terrible monthly cramps. Over time, the IUD not only would virtually eradicate her bleeding and pain, but would also provide top-tier contraception for up to seven years. Once Mary became sexually active, her annual pregnancy risk would be around 1 in 700. By contrast, Mary’s college-age brother, who was relying on condoms (with an annual pregnancy risk of 1 in 5), had to share the emotional and monetary burden of an unwanted pregnancy and abortion.

No parent wants a son depending on the young women he dates to prevent a surprise pregnancy, but the options stink. As one mother of three boys put it:

Every day teens are having sexual relations, and the method of birth control is either left to the girl (most of which aren’t on anything because they don’t want their parents to know), condoms (which are horribly unreliable, especially in the hands of teens), or most often nothing. If parents were more involved and more teens had access to new methods of contraception … more kids would have the ability to make a future. Boys need that option as much as girls.

Over the past 50 years, birth control for women has been refined to the point that there are now dozens of alternatives that are far safer than pregnancy, many of which have added benefits like reducing menstrual symptoms, acne, or even the risk of cancer. The array includes three kinds of long-acting “fit and forget” contraceptives that are over 20 times better than the familiar “pill” but allow a quick return to normal fertility. But, after all this time, men are still stuck choosing between two century-old choices: condoms and vasectomies.

Don’t get me wrong—condoms are far better than nothing. They are the best thing we have for reducing sexually transmitted diseases. However, many people have a mistaken perception of how well they work for actual pregnancy prevention. If everybody who relies on condoms could use them perfectly and with perfect consistency, only two couples in 100 would get pregnant each year via condom failure. But from a “human factors engineering” standpoint, condoms stink. In the real world where people fumble, forget, and wait too long to put them on or take them off, many couples depending on condoms end up pregnant. Condoms drop pregnancy rates from 85 percent (the rate for a sexually active couple using no contraception for one year) to 18 percent—a big improvement, but still terrifying for someone whose plans and efforts could be blown apart by a ruptured rubber.

Men want better choices, and women want better choices for men, and parents want better choices for their sons. And yet, as Dr. John Amory at the University of Washington put it, “Everybody’s been saying, ‘within the next five years,’ for the last 30 years,” but no new method for men has made it to market.

Dependable Male Birth Control Could Change Our Lives

We all, men and women alike, should be demanding better birth control for men. First off, there’s the fairness factor. Just like girls, young men should be able to pursue their dreams, confident that they won’t be derailed by a surprise pregnancy. In the 1999 movie A Walk on the Moon, a young mother, locked into a traditional working-class lifestyle by teen pregnancy, feels drawn to the 1969 Summer of Love emerging around her. As she indulges her yearning for freedom and adventure (and Viggo Mortensen), her husband, who “did the right thing” when she first got pregnant, is confronted with his own losses, especially the college education foregone. “You think I wanted to fix TVs?” he asks.

Besides derailing individual lives, the fact that men can’t count on their contraception means we all get stuck living in old cultural scripts. For millennia, our ancestors had no reliable means to manage their fertility. Given the power of the human sex drive, even abstinence commitments backed by a death penalty for sinners couldn’t be considered reliable. In other words, if our ancestors sought sex or intimacy—and we humans crave both—then children were a byproduct, wanted or not.

Consequently, throughout history children came into the world unplanned and mostly when parents would have chosen not to have another child. But to thrive, kids needed just as much care as they do today. In response, both culture and religion evolved messages to help ensure that such children were wanted and loved when they arrived. “Let go and let God,” some Christians say. “Que será, será.” “A baby is a blessing.” Still, today, some fundamentalist sects make passive submission to pregnancy a sacred virtue, and in Western culture at large, go-with-the-flow childbearing is accepted and celebrated. This is true even though we now have good evidence that thoughtful family planning increases maternal and child health, prosperity, marital harmony, and the ability of young men and women to live fulfilling lives.

Thanks to some determined researchers and funders, things may get better in the near future. An array of promising possibilities can be found in various stages of research around the globe. Here are some of the top contenders.

The “Clean Sheets Pill” (London, Oxford): Dr. Nnaemeka Amobi and his team are researching a hormone-free method that has been dubbed the “clean sheets pill” because it decreases or eliminates semen emission while leaving intact the sensation of ejaculation and the pleasure of male orgasm. The pill works by relaxing just the muscles in the vas deferens that normally propel sperm-containing semen forward and out. Without the forward propulsion, circular muscle contractions essentially close down the passage. Reducing or eliminating emission of semen not only prevents pregnancy, it also decreases the spread of semen-born diseases, including HIV. The hope is that this medication can be delivered via pills that men take before sex, much like Viagra.

RISUG (Kharagpur): More than 250 men have undergone a procedure called RISUG (reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance), which researchers hope will provide a cheaper and more reversible alternative to vasectomy. A liquid polymer is injected into the vas deferens, where it provides contraception for up to ten years. In the duct, the positively charged polymer reportedly acts almost like a magnet, reacting with the negative electrical charge on the membranes of passing sperm and rendering them infertile. In research with rats and primates, fertility has been restored by a noninvasive procedure that removes the polymer. Human clinical trials of RISUG are moving forward slowly in India.

Vasalgel (San Francisco): Inspired by RISUG, a similar polymer, dubbed Vasalgel, is under development in the United States, with rabbit research now underway to meet Food and Drug Administration standards and primate studies planned. Over 16,000 men and women have signed up to receive information about clinical trials, expected to begin in 2014.

Ultrasound (Chapel Hill): Therapeutic ultrasound is a common sports medicine treatment for injured joints and muscles. A brief massage of the testes with the same instruments has been shown to reduce sperm count in both animals and humans. Doctors have long known that heating the testes even to body temperature reduces fertility, and we know that therapeutic ultrasound produces a deep warmth. But for reasons that are unclear, the contraceptive effect of ultrasound is ten times that of heat alone. Depending on the level of exposure, contraceptive duration ranges from six weeks to permanent. One major challenge at this point is to find a treatment regimen that is either reliably reversible or reliably permanent. Of the two, use as a nonsurgical vasectomy option is more likely.

Gamendazole (Kansas City): Potential contraceptives are sometimes discovered as side effects of other medications, and gamendazole derives from a cancer treatment that by chance was noted to decrease male fertility. Research shows that the drug works by interrupting sperm maturation. Men taking gamendazole produce and release normal quantities of sperm, but the sperm are “nonfunctional.” In mating studies of rats, the drug achieved 100 percent infertility and was fully reversible. Research with monkeys looks promising.

Adjudin (New York): Like gamendazole, adjudin is an analogue of a cancer drug, lonidamine. It works the same way, causing sperm to be released when they are immature. For lonidamine, the gap between a contraceptive dose and a toxic dose is small, making the drug too dangerous to give to healthy people. But researchers at the Population Council were able to create a related compound that is taken up only by the precise receptors in the testes where it is needed for contraception. This dramatically reduces the needed dose. Two remaining drawbacks to adjudin are that it can be administered only by injection, and its effect is short-lived. Researchers are working to devise a version that doesn’t require frequent injections.

JQ1 (Waco, Boston): JQ1 is related to some familiar drugs, Valium and Xanax, but it has a very different effect. Instead of bringing on sleep or reducing anxiety, it blocks production of a protein in the testes that is essential to sperm growth. In mice that are given JQ1, the number of sperm takes a nose dive, and those that are produced don’t swim very well, which makes the mice infertile. Sex drive remains unaltered, and after the drug is stopped, sperm production rapidly returns to normal.

Testosterone and Progestin (Beijing, Los Angeles, Seattle): If injected or absorbed through the skin, testosterone alters hormonal messaging and reduces production of sperm. When combined with a progestogen and rubbed on in gel form, a daily application has effectively suppressed sperm concentration in almost 90 percent of men, with few side effects. Current research is exploring the best combination of testosterone and progestin, and how such a combination can be delivered to provide long-acting birth control.

With such a variety of options (and more) in the works, it seems like something new for men should be just around the corner. But much of the research is progressing at a snail’s pace due in part to regulatory barriers and lack of funding.

Contraceptives get used by young, healthy people, which means that the bar for safety and efficacy is much higher than for many other drugs. A cancer treatment might be welcomed if it has a 70 percent success rate and makes your hair fall out. Needless to say, either of these is a non-starter for a new contraceptive. The high bar (and the corresponding high risk of liability) makes drug companies and even philanthropists wary of investing in contraception—which has to be almost 100 percent effective and side effect-free to be a success.

Will any of these options make it to market in the next five years? That depends in part on whether drug companies, nonprofit research funders, and public health experts think we’re ready. Do men really want to take responsibility for contraception? Will women trust them to do so? Is there enough demand to make a massive high-risk investment in research and development worthwhile?

Are We Ready?


In May 2013, when a Florida man found that his girlfriend was pregnant, he tricked her into taking an abortifacient—an act of physical assault. Ultimately, caught in a web of religion-driven anti-abortion laws, he was charged not with assault but with “fetal murder.” Few people were sympathetic to his actions, but many were sympathetic to his plight. Men, like women, need effective tools for managing fertility if they are to have a hope of charting their own life course.



In general, people tend to overestimate the side effects of female birth control, falsely believing, for example, that contraceptives cause weight gain. But some female bodies respond poorly to even the micro-dose of copper or hormones present in top-tier contraceptives, and for other women the cost of the most effective methods is prohibitive. Barriers to access abound. Faced with the health risks of an unintended pregnancy, a woman can feel caught between a rock and a hard place. Consequently, many women appreciate guys who step up to the plate. Of almost 2,000 women surveyed in Edinburgh, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Cape Town, a vast majority said they thought a male pill was a good idea, and only 2 percent said they wouldn’t trust their partners to use it.

To be frank, more men might do well to ask whether they should trust women to manage contraception. In the United States, with most contraception still in the hands of women, close to half of pregnancies are unintended, and the transition to thoughtful, intentional childbearing has been stalled for decades. Around a quarter of pregnancies occur in a month when a woman says she had used birth control. Like condoms, female barrier methods and even the birth control pill are quite subject to human error. In one study of 82 women, participants on average missed four or five pills per month, even when they were sent text-message reminders. It’s simply not reasonable to assume that ordinary human beings will do the same thing in the same way at the same time every day for 40 years—or every time they have sex. While longer-acting “fit and forget” contraceptives like IUDs and implants appear to radically change the equation, so would an improved array of options for the male half of the human race.



Today, research on male contraception is 50 years behind research on female contraception. The difference is as much as anything an artifact of history and tradition, which ripple into the present. Several years ago in a South African youth hostel, my daughters were dismayed to encounter a young man who casually said that he wanted a dozen children. As they queried him, they got a glimpse into both his culture and our own—into all times and places where child care has been primarily a female concern, and males could count offspring like a banker counts dollars. But gender roles and parenting have evolved in the last 50 years, all in the direction of more equality, mutuality, and flexible division of labor between men and women. For many men, those changes include a desire to be deeply present in their children’s lives.

As men get more involved in late-night diaper changes and storybook reading and getting kids off to school, their perspective on having children may look more and more like the one that has historically been held by many women. They don’t want 12 kids; they want two or four or one, or sometimes, knowing their own limits, none at all. In other words, they want childbearing to be intentional, and they want to decide for themselves when the time is right. It’s time that they had the tools to do so.

Image: Contraception via Shutterstock


Research into Infections and Cancer May End in New Birth Control Methods Down the Road http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/09/09/research-into-stds-and-cancer-may-end-in-new-birth-control-methods-down-road/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=research-into-stds-and-cancer-may-end-in-new-birth-control-methods-down-road http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/09/09/research-into-stds-and-cancer-may-end-in-new-birth-control-methods-down-road/#comments Sun, 09 Sep 2012 21:08:46 +0000 Two separate research efforts—one looking to prevent STD transmission and the other looking to treat cancer—may ultimately lead to new options in contraception including a pill for men and a vaginal ring that prevents both STDs and pregnancy. But the journey from lab to pharmacy is long and we shouldn't forget the good methods we already have.

The post Research into Infections and Cancer May End in New Birth Control Methods Down the Road appeared first on RH Reality Check.



A Microbial Ring Could Become A New Form of Dual Protection







A Male Birth Control Pill








In the Meantime – Condoms










Lecture over.


Global Roundup: China Works Toward Remedying Gender Imbalance; One Step Closer to Creating Male Contraceptive Pill in UK http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/05/30/global-roundup-china-works-toward-remedying-gender-imbalance-one-step-closer-to-0/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=global-roundup-china-works-toward-remedying-gender-imbalance-one-step-closer-to-0 http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/05/30/global-roundup-china-works-toward-remedying-gender-imbalance-one-step-closer-to-0/#comments Wed, 30 May 2012 20:49:42 +0000

Weekly global roundup: Chinese government works toward remedying population gender imbalance; Jordan is seeing some progress in family planning and reproductive health; With the discovery of a new gene, the UK is one step closer to creating a male contraceptive pill; Cultural and traditional beliefs are road blocks toward healthy family planning in Rwanda.

The post Global Roundup: China Works Toward Remedying Gender Imbalance; One Step Closer to Creating Male Contraceptive Pill in UK appeared first on RH Reality Check.

China: Official Vows That China Will Correct Gender Imbalance



Jordan: Progress In Reproductive Health & Family Planning


United Kingdom: One Step Close to Male Contraceptive Pill



Rwanda: Family Planning Being Subverted By Cultural Beliefs


Via All Africa.

