Trial for first male contraceptive gel opens

Expected to be as successful as hormonal birth control for women

Researchers in the United States have begun the first wide-scale clinical trial of a contraceptive topical gel for men, Gizmodo reported.

The trial will enroll 420 couples from seven countries including Chile, England and Sweden. The first batch will come from couples in the US in Seattle, California and Kansa.

The gel is a made of progestin hormone and testosterone. Male volunteers apply the gel daily to their arms and shoulders for about 20 weeks. Once their sperm counts are low enough to be classified as infertile, they will use the gel for the next year as their sole contraceptive.

After a year, they will stop the gel and be tracked by researchers for another six months to make sure that sperm counts reverse to normal.

Christina Wang, a researcher at the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute and principal investigator of the trial has been working on the gel with her researchers for almost ten years.

“We’ve had over 200 men exposed to the medication, and we’ve never had any serious adverse events. But we will be monitoring everything very closely.”

Research shows that 18 per cent of couples in the real world who exclusively use condoms still become pregnant within a year’s time.

“Condoms are good and they protect you against sexually transmitted infections, but the failure rate of everyday use with condoms is very high,” said Wang.

Depending on how well men follow the usage instructions, the gel is expected to be as effective at preventing pregnancy as the hormonal options available to women – 90 per cent or higher.

This article originally appeared in Gizmodo.