For decades, researchers have been focusing on hormonal methods of male birth control but nothing ever has come to fruition. The fact is testosterone doesn’t work in up to 20 percent of men and has some side effects, like weight gain and a decrease in ‘good’ cholesterol.
(Ed. note: That’s all! Please compare to the side effects for women on female birth control: nausea, weight gain, breast tenderness, headaches, missed periods, mood changes, decreased libido and possibly blood clots and even cancer with long-term use, to name several common ones. Maybe, after they figure out how to do this without hormones for men, they might try to expand this new approach to women’s birth control. -DB)
So researchers are now focusing on non-hormonal methods, reports Gabby Hess, specifically, on how retinoic acid receptors regulate fertility at the cellular level.
Led by Dr. Gunda Georg, the team has been able to isolate a compound that could become the scaffolding for a male birth control pill.
