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Science Gets Nearer To The Male Birth Control Pill

Science is getting closer to developing a male birth control pill, according to a study published on Monday.

The report featured in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. The thought of birth control for men which uses hormones has caused much debate within the medical community.

Trials have been carried out in China on over 1,000 men who have already fathered one child within the last two years. They have then been injected monthly with testosterone undecanoate (TU) in tea seed oil.

Although sperm production is normally triggered by testosterone, too much of the hormone can cause the testes to shut down.

“If you give external testosterone in the blood, this decreases the testosterone in the testes,” said researcher Dr. John K. Amory, from the University of Washington (Seattle).

“It’s because the body has what we call a feed-back loop. The brain sees the hormones and thinks, ‘Oh, we’re making plenty of that,’ and shuts off [sperm] production.” Amory commented.

The study showed a 95 percent success rate for preventing conception. For men whose sperm levels fell to the expected levels within the first few months of the study, the injections were shown to be 98 percent effective.

Researchers are aiming to get the injections to be 99 percent effective in preventing pregnancy. More long term research is needed to find out how safe the injections are, although the findings are very encouraging.

         

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Rapid weight gain in Baby girls may signal future health problems

New research suggests that babies who rapidly gain weight during the first months of life are more likely to become overweight or even obese when they get older. Being overweight or obese could put kids at an increased risk of a range of diseases in later life, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

The study of girls concluded that weight gain in the first nine months was critical to how heavy they would be at 10 years old.

Funded by the World Cancer Research Fund, data was collected from 2,715 girls from birth to two months, two to nine months and nine to 19 months.

Faster weight gain during the first nine months was related to a higher body weight, height and overall body mass index scores when the girls were 10. The rate of weight gain between the ages of nine months and 19 months did not have the same effect.

Official statistics from the national child measurement programme suggest that 22 per cent of children in England are overweight or obese by the time they start school, while nearly a third (31 per cent) fall into these categories at age 10 or 11.

The study, in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, also found that girls who put on weight too quickly in infancy were more likely to start their periods at a young age, which has been linked to an increased risk of breast cancer.

Previous research has suggested girls who start their periods early are more likely to be overweight as adults.

The study, from researchers at Cambridge and Bristol universities, is the first to have linked early periods to rapid weight gain early in infancy.

The researchers said that it was the speed at which babies of nine months put on weight that was the important factor.

Ken Ong, from Cambridge, said: “The suggestion that weight gain in the first nine months of a girl’s life increases the risk of being overweight and starting her periods early is interesting because in the UK both childhood obesity and the number of girls who start their periods early are rising.

“If we are serious about tackling childhood obesity, we need to understand why children become overweight in the first place and that is why this study is important.”