Reversible male contraceptives: Current progress
Keywords:
Reversible, male contraceptionAbstract
Introduction: The current world population is 7.5 billion and growing. It is expected to be over 9.7 billion by 20501. Contraception is important in controlling population. While several contraceptive methods are available, there is room for improved methods. Most are being utilized by women and few are being developed for males2. This review summarized the current evidence of male contraception based on contemporary clinical trials in human and animal models. We intentionally omitted a discussion of protective measures such as condoms as surgical vasectomy is already accepted in clinical practice.
Methodology: We reviewed the available evidence using a search engine from PubMed and Scopus. Unwanted pregnancy is an ideal control arm for studies regarding the effectiveness of various contraceptive methods. However, due to study designs and ethical issues in human research, either sperm concentration or serum gonadotropin is mostly used as a surrogate outcome instead of pregnancy rates.
The ideal target for male contraception is “azoospermia,” in which no sperm is found in a routine semen analysis; however, in practice, a sperm concentration of less than 1 million/ml is acceptable according to a recommendation by the American Society of Andrology3.
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