Publications
Partners
The female contraceptive pill has been available for more than half a century. Today, a wide range of reliable options to control female fertility are available, including the Pill, patches, and intrauterine devices (IUDs). But this also means that women largely bear the burden of pregnancy prevention.
Men, on the other hand, only have two options available: condoms, which are prone to failure under real-life conditions, and vasectomy, which is mostly irreversible. But the results of a new preliminary study may offer an effective and long-lasting, but reversible, male contraceptive.
The study involved an oral contraceptive and was carried out in mice – a standard step in drug development for humans. The non-hormonal pill, YCT529, was administered orally for four weeks. The findings revealed that it drastically reduced sperm counts and was 99% effective at preventing pregnancy in a mating trial.
