Posted: October 31, 2016 Contributor: administrator
Possible Birth Control for Men Stops Sperm From Swimming
While the hopes of getting a birth control pill for men on the market have been grim, in the U.K., researchers may have just had a major breakthrough. Researchers have struggled in the past at developing a male birth control pill because men produce thousands of sperm every second and overloading the body with hormones to stop sperm production, which is how female contraceptives work, is not a viable or healthy solution for men.
Well, according to the Telegraph, researchers in the U.K. have found the solution to the male birth control problem. Instead of altering sperm production, the researchers have developed a compound that temporarily disables the protein that allows sperms to swim. Subsequently, the sperm cannot swim through a woman’s uterus and fertilize an egg, resulting in pregnancy. John Howl, Ph.D., a professor of molecular pharmacology at the University of Wolverhampton in England and the lead researcher of this breakthrough, claims that the results from the compound are almost instantaneous. When sperm comes into contact with the compound they created, the sperm freezes—making it unable to move.
Howl and his team of researches have not created a pill, just the compound that can be developed into a pill in a clinical setting. So don’t get too excited just yet, it may be some time before this pill is on the market!