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After decades of failed attempts to bring a viable male birth control to the market it appears one might finally be on the way and it will change ‘shoulder rubs’ in the bedroom forever.
Demand for male birth control has been on the rise for years. A stud published in the scientific journal Contraception back in March of this year revealed that approximately 75% of sexually active straight men would be willing to use male birth control. Now, NBC News has published a story about a new gel that has just concluded phase 2 of trials and if approved it could be widely available.
24-year-old Logan Whitehead was a participant in Phase 2 of the male birth control trial and spoke with NBC News about his experience. He said it “smelled like hand sanitizer, looked like hand sanitizer” only it was a gel that was designed to stop sperm production.
It was applied by rubbing the gel into his shoulders each morning for a year and a half. The phase 2 trial results were just revealed at the Endocrine Society’s conference in Boston by researchers from the National Institutes of Health’s Contraceptive Development Program. The results found:
After 12 weeks of applying the gel every day, 86% of trial participants achieved sperm suppression, meaning they had only up to 1 million sperm per milliliter of semen, the amount the researchers deemed effective for contraception. On average, the timing for effective contraception was eight weeks.
For context, most men produce between 15 million and 200 million sperm per milliliter.
Safe and easy. Nestorone is the same synthetic hormone used in another contraceptive for women. It is called a progestin and in conjunction with testosterone the duo combine to prevent the production of sperm while not impacting sex drive and it appears to have done exactly that.
The second half of Phase 2 trials are still ongoing. They will now track how effective it is at preventing pregnancy and not just zero in on sperm count.
Why is male birth control so late to the game?
According to the researchers, the reason male birth control hasn’t been brought to the market yet is simply a lack of funding. There aren’t any large benefactors out there jumping at the chance to pay for expensive and lengthy medical trials for this when female birth control already exists.
The report from NBC News relays that researchers are hopeful that once the first form of male birth control is approved by the FDA there will be more funding as pharmaceutical companies seek to gain a foothold in the market.
If it is safe and as simple as rubbing a gel on your shoulders, would you give it a try? Let us know in the Facebook comments!