Birth control pills
Male birth control pills might be released in the market soon. Pictured: Packages of Bayer aspirin and Schering Yasmin contraceptive pills lie on a table at a pharmacy on March 24, 2006 in Berlin, Germany. Getty Images/Andreas Rentz

Male birth control pills might be released t the market soon as one pill was recently deemed safe for human consumption.

On Monday, a team of scientists released a statement that their male birth control pill has passed human safety tests. Their 28-day trial saw no participants dropping out from side effects of their unique take of the contraceptive method — a problem that previous attempts at a male birth control pill experienced.

But how does this male birth control pill actually work?

According to researchers at the Los Angeles Biomed Research Institute (LA BioMed) and University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, the pill has an active agent that is two hormones in one. The hybrid molecule is made up of part modified testosterone and part progestin and would ensure that the person taking the pill always has matching levels of the hormones in their body.

Dr. Christina Wang, the associate director of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at LA BioMed, explained that the combination of the two hormones would help avoid low sex drive or other health problems that modified hormone levels can cause.

Wang and her colleagues found that the body processes identical doses of progestin and testosterone at different speeds if these two hormones are separated. Progestin inhibits sperm production while at the same time reducing natural testosterone levels. Consequently, a major drop in testosterone levels would result in the increased risk of blood clots, depression and other health issues.

Since it has a combination of these two hormones, the male birth control pill works by keeping the sperm count low while maintaining the balance of the sex hormone to prevent any health problems, according to the study published in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

Some participants of the 28-day trial took a pill with either 200 or 400 milligrams of the active ingredient, while others took a placebo. The study focused on determining if the pill was safe for human consumption and not on whether it actually worked. The latter would need further testing as it takes 60 to 90 days for sperm counts to go down.

None of the participants who took the pill experienced higher blood pressure, depression and other serious side effects that could come from very low testosterone levels.

However, there were still some side effects as 22 of the 30 men who participated in the testing reported acne, lower sex drive, headaches, tiredness or mild erectile dysfunction. The group also showed an average weight gain of 2.8 pounds or 4.2 pounds, depending on the dose.

Wang and her team are currently conducting studies on rats and monkeys with the aim of determining whether the pill is safe for consumption over a period of three months or longer. The next step would then be to do the same test with human participants.

But the team of scientists aims to eventually transform the male birth control pill into an injection as "not all men want to take a pill every day," according to Wang.

In December, a National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded male birth control also kicked off its clinical trial. Unlike Wang and her colleague's take on the contraceptive, however, this one comes in gel form that men would have to apply to the back and shoulders once daily.

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