Male birth control drug is 100 per cent effective in mice

A male contraceptive that immobilises sperm for two hours prevented being pregnant in mice and resulted in no adversarial negative effects

By Grace Wade

A drug that quickly paralyses sperm may turn into the primary on-demand male contraception tablet. In mice, the contraceptive was 100 per cent efficient at stopping being pregnant for about 2 hours, with full fertility returning 24 hours later.

“This is, in the male contraceptive field, totally revolutionary,” says Jochen Buck at Cornell University in New York. Most different potential male contraceptives in scientific improvement are solely efficient after eight to 12 weeks, he says.

Previous analysis has proven that sperm require a protein referred to as soluble adenylyl cyclase (sAC) to maneuver, and that males who can’t produce sAC as a result of uncommon genetic mutations are infertile. So, Buck and his colleagues assessed whether or not a drug inhibiting sAC could possibly be used as a male contraceptive. If sperm are motionless, they will’t journey up the vaginal tract to fertilise an egg.

The crew assessed the motion of sperm collected from 17 male mice, eight of whom obtained the drug. In samples collected 2 hours after mice obtained the drug, solely about 6 per cent of sperm have been cellular on common in contrast with about 30 per cent in samples from management mice. The impact wore off after about 24 hours, “which means we not only have an on-demand contraceptive, but one that is also rapidly reversible”, says Melanie Balbach, additionally at Cornell University.

In one other check, the researchers paired 52 male mice with females half-hour after giving the males the contraceptive drug. After 2 hours every pair had mated, however there have been no ensuing pregnancies, indicating the contraceptive was 100 per cent efficient. The drug additionally didn’t trigger noticeable negative effects, even when mice obtained 3 times the usual dose of a comparable compound repeatedly for 42 days.

“What I like about the proposed contraceptive in this study is the on-demand option,” says Ulrike Schimpf on the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. “It would act rapidly, temporarily and is efficient at the first dose.”

Buck and Balbach plan to refine the drug in order that it lasts longer earlier than testing it in people. If all goes properly, they hope to start scientific trials by 2025.

“We need more [birth control] options, and men need an option so that the burden of contraception is not on females anymore,” says Balbach. “We’re very optimistic that once men take the inhibitor, it will have the same effect.”

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