A buzzy new animal study offers another contender in the search for a male form of birth control. Researchers at the University of Minnesota created a birth control pill for male mice, which proved 99 percent effective in preventing pregnancy.
The contraceptive targets a protein in the body that receives a form of vitamin A, which is involved with sperm production and fertility. Researchers gave this compound, referred to as YCT529, to male mice for four weeks; the animals showed drastically lower sperm counts. Four to six weeks after they stopped receiving the contraceptive, the mice could impregnate a female mouse again.
While the team behind this new study is encouraged by their promising results, others are skeptical, and see it as just another intriguing advancement that may not actually make it to market. Experts said we shouldn’t anticipate widely available male birth control pills any time soon.
“I would be very skeptical until I see human data,” Dr. Amin Herati, director of the male infertility and men’s health program within Brady Urological Institute at Johns Hopkins, said about the study. There are key differences between how human and mice genes interact, he said, and in the reproductive systems.
