Male Contraceptive May Have Potential for Preventing HIV Transmission

Male Contraceptive May Have Potential for Preventing HIV Transmission

RISUG (a.k.a. Vasalgel) is a reversible method of male contraception, developed in India but gaining interest and support in North America. It involves injecting a chemical plug into each vas deferens that neutralizes sperm as it passes through, is viable for 10 years, and can be reversed with another injection.

While its efficacy as birth control is pretty well established in current trials (toxicity is still a concern), studies are also continuing to test whether the acid produced by the injected chemicals lowers the pH of semen enough to kill HIV.

If RISUG passes muster as both contraceptive and prophylaxis, men of all sexual orientations could have the option of undergoing one simple operation and not have to bother with condoms or Truvada (although they should remain aware of its ineffectiveness against other STDs).

Link goes to an abstract by Sujoy Guha, the bioengineer who developed RISUG. I’m choosing to ignore the heterocentricity of the opening sentence—”HIV transmission from the male to the female is a major health problem”—as that may be the case in his home country of India, as it is in parts of Africa (i.e. HIV/AIDS cases on the rise largely due to women being infected by their husbands).

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 16th, 2011 at 1:51 am and is filed under Health & Wellness, Science Facts & Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.