All 90 spots for volunteers are now taken in Shepherd Medical Company’s US study of the Intra Vas Device, a set of tiny silicone plugs designed as a vasectomy alternative.
Shepherd Medical Company only started their study last fall, so men have signed up quite quickly at the 3 participating centers. This is good news for anyone waiting for the IVD, because the sooner enrollment is full, the sooner Shepherd will have their 6-month results. Those results will help determine their chances at getting venture capital and additional grant funding. It's too soon to say for sure, but we hear that the device’s effectiveness and men’s satisfaction are looking very promising.
The IVD's developers hope to have it on the US market in 2010. From the perspective of consumers, the IVD may be the first male contraceptive to go from an abstract future availability (“It will be on the market 5 to 10 years from now…” repeated indefinitely) to a concrete prediction of availability in 4 years.
The Cochrane Collaboration – a widely respected, independent nonprofit that undertakes systematic reviews of health care techniques – has released a new report on the importance of physician training in no-scalpel vasectomy (NSV) procedures. The study showed that NSV is a faster procedure than traditional vasectomy, that it results in fewer post-operative complications, and that men resumed their sex lives more quickly. Typically, an NSV does not even require a stitch.
Dr. Marc Goldstein, executive director of the Men's Service Center at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College, estimates that one-third of the vasectomies performed in the US are NSVs. He says men are now requesting NSVs specifically. He advises men to ask their doctors how much experience they have with the NSV technique.
The Cochrane review showed that experienced NSV doctors had significantly better results than those who had just been trained. In one of the reviewed studies, a regular vasectomy doctor did a few NSVs after watching an instructional video. Those few NSVs had the same rates of complication one would expect from traditional vasectomies.
If you know someone who is considering a vasectomy, you can share the Cochrane review’s conclusion: seeking out a top notch NSV doctor is worth the effort. MCIP can recommend NSV specialists in Quebec, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Florida, and websites like vasectomy-information.com have suggestions about finding others.
Read more:
No-scalpel vasectomies by skilled surgeons may speed recovery, April 17
Scalpel versus no-scalpel incision for vasectomy, Cochrane Database Systems Review, April 18
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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) fund three contraceptive research centers, and they've managed to hang onto that funding through severe federal budget cuts because the funding is congressionally mandated.
The newest member of the club is a research center at the University of Kansas (KU). Dr. Joseph Tash at the KU Medical Center “has been awarded more than $7.5 million in funding from NIH to lead a team, including researchers at seven universities, in a collaborative effort to develop male contraceptives.
“This five-year grant will establish the Interdisciplinary Center for Male Contraceptive Research and Drug Development, a multi-institutional organization that will work to develop new non-hormonal, reversible male contraceptive agents for drug production.” The KU center will collaborate with researchers at the University of Minnesota, Duke University, the University of California-San Francisco, and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.
Under the grant, the researchers will continue working on Gamendazole, a drug that has reversibly suppressed sperm production in rats. The KU facility is also one of the few universities in the country with a High Throughput Screening lab, which radically speeds the evaluation of new drugs. Dr. Tash also plans to use protein analysis to identify promising candidate compounds.
The NIH’s choice to direct these funds towards nonhormonal male contraceptive development is a savvy one. Survey data collected at MaleContraceptives.org show that 60% of men would select a nonhormonal male contraceptive as their first or second choice.
We hope that some of the methods that are farther along – such as the US and Chinese IVD designs, and RISUG – will someday get this sort of attention too so that they can make it to market sooner than later.
Read more:
KU Medical Center to lead $7.5-million male contraceptive research and drug development program, April 10
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A group of researchers at several prestigious universities have collaborated to study the factors which affect young men’s use of sexual health care services in the US. They looked at data from a nationwide survey of nearly 1,700 adolescent boys between the ages of 15 and 19. Two-thirds of the boys interviewed had seen a doctor for a physical exam in the preceding year.
The researchers found that the older the boys got, and the more traditional their beliefs about masculinity, the less likely they were to see a doctor. Boys who had already had sex, had a sexually transmitted infection, or used drugs were no more likely to use health care services than their lower-risk peers.
The researchers also identified several characteristics which made the boys in the study more likely to use sexual health services. Boys with health insurance were significantly more likely to use health care services. (85% of those in the study were insured, which is about the same as the national average.) Communicating directly with their fathers or both parents about sex also raised the likelihood of doctor visits.
The researchers conclude that adolescent sexual health care will improve most if we focus our efforts on better access to health insurance, good parent-child communication, and teaching that use of health care services is not an unmanly characteristic.
Sexual health services for men are a growing part of the work of family planning clinics around the US. The conclusions of this study will help clinics design better services tailored to young men. Young men already using these services ask about new contraceptive choices. Soon such clinics may become the main venue for distributing new male contraceptives.
Read more:
Myths About Manhood Keep Teen Boys From Sexual Health Care, Medical News Today, April 11
Masculine Beliefs, Parental Communication, and Male Adolescents’ Health Care Use, Arik Marcell et al., April 4
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Editors
Elaine Lissner, Director of the Male Contraception Information Project (MCIP)
Email: info@NewMaleContraception.org
MCIP is entirely nonprofit and works in three areas: raising public awareness of promising nonhormonal male contraceptives, advocating increased and expedited government research, and serving as a resource for journalists who wish to write about the subject.
Kirsten Thompson, Director of the Male Contraception Coalition (MCC)
Email: info@MaleContraceptives.org
The Coalition’s objectives are to speed the development of new male contraceptives through increased legislative and institutional support, to raise funds for applied male contraception research and development, and to educate the public about the work of the research community.
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