Birth Control Gel for Men Has Researchers Excited After Promising Findings

The gel is applied to a man's shoulders, not elsewhere, and works by combining two hormones.

June 3, 2024

Lab technician in gloves writes notes beside a labeled container of sperm on a table — Image via Getty/Aleksandr Zubkov

The male birth control race is heating up amid the erosion of women’s rights in the U.S.

Over the weekend, early results from a still-in-progress clinical trial were presented at the Endocrine Society’s annual Boston meeting, dubbed ENDO 2024. The findings, notably, showed that the male contraceptive gel in question actually works quicker than initially expected.

In a statement, Diana Blithe, Ph.D., pointed to the often "slow onset" as a potential problem in terms of widespread adoption of this type of birth control. But this particular male contraceptive gel, which combines segesterone acetate and testosterone, has been shown to suppress sperm production faster than its counterparts in the burgeoning field.

"A more rapid time to suppression may increase the attractiveness and acceptability of this drug to potential users," Blithe, a senior researcher who also serves as chief of the Contraceptive Development Program at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, said.

In separate comments to Gizmodo's Ed Cara, seen here, Blithe said she and her team are "really pleased" with the findings thus far, which are pulled from a study encompassing 222 men who underwent three or more weeks of daily gel treatment. 86 percent of men in the study had hit the contraception threshold within 15 weeks, with the median landing at under eight weeks.

To be absolutely clear, and to simply get ahead of anyone who may assume otherwise before giving future prospective users the wrong idea, neither the official press release nor associated reports make any mention of this gel needing to be applied to one’s genitalia. Instead, as pointed out here, men using the product need only to apply the gel "once daily to each shoulder blade."

As the U.S. continues to piss the proverbial bed when it comes to simply protecting what should be considered basic human rights, the widespread push for scientific leaps forward in the male birth control space is excellent news indeed. In fact, this isn’t the first objectively promising report of the male birth control variety. Just last year, for example, an on-demand option showed serious promise after being tested in mice.