After years of searching, scientists may have found a workable male contraceptive drug in a medication that temporarily stops sperm from swimming.
A study published in Nature Communications on Tuesday - which is Valentine's Day in the United States - reported on the discovery of a new drug that showed remarkable contraceptive ability in male mice within minutes of being applied.
According to the study, the scientists made the find during research for an unrelated eye disease, but found that the drug being tested also blocked a molecular pathway in the mice that was necessary for sperm to function normally.
After giving the mice the eye disease drug, they looked at the mice sperm under a microscope and found a remarkable effect.
“She showed the movie of these sperm not moving, just twitching,” Lonny Levin, a professor of pharmacology at Weill Cornell Medicine, said of postdoctoral scientist Melanie Balbach, who suggested they check on the drug’s effect on mouse sperm. “I said, ‘Oh my God. That’s a holy grail. That’s a male contraceptive.’”
They found that an improved version of the drug could stop sperm from maturing and swimming just 30 minutes after injection in the mice. The effect began to wear off about 2.5 hours later, and the mice regained their normal fertility afterward.
“This could be a game changer for a male contraceptive,” Wipawee “Joy” Winuthayanon, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive health at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, told US media about the find.
This is by no means the first male contraceptive drug to be developed. However, its on-demand ability is unrivaled - most tend to take several weeks of daily application to ramp up to full potency and just as long to wear off again.
The search for workable male contraception has gained fresh momentum since the US Supreme Court struck down the federal right to an abortion in a June 2022 ruling that spawned nationwide protests. Since then, bans or restrictions on abortion access have been introduced in nearly two dozen states.
While women began hoarding abortion and birth control pills in the lead-up to the anticipated ruling, there was also a pronounced uptick in interest in male vasectomies afterward.
“Many of the guys are saying that they have been thinking about a vasectomy for a while, and the Roe v. Wade decision was just that final factor that tipped them over the edge and made them submit the online registration,” one doctor who performs vasectomies told US media in early July, just weeks after the high court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
According to polling data from before the ruling, roughly half of pregnancies in the US each year are unintended, and roughly half of unintended pregnancies are aborted.