A hormone-free pill, called YCT-529, that temporarily stops sperm production by blocking a vitamin A metabolite has just concluded its first safety trial in humans, getting a step closer to increasing male contraceptive options
Nether method is more complicated or more natural or “easier.” It’s fiddling with hormones to decrease fertility.
Your personal perception is that because when women are pregnant they can’t get pregnant, they should be the ones to have their hormones fiddled with, despite the risk of death, that has, thus far not been shown in male hormonal birth control. That’s got nothing to do with science.
I’m sorry to call you out, but I think you’re disregarding a valid point and establishing a false equivalence between this contraceptive method, and traditional hormone-based methods.
Please let me elaborate. This drug is not hormone-based. It works by blocking a receptor called “RAR-alpha” that exists in every cell’s nucleus, and it works as a switch that controls gene transcription - it determines what the cell eventually produces and does. The body chops up vitamin A and uses it to trigger this receptor, and we know that it plays a role in many different processes, from cell differentiation (including formation of the heart, nervous system, and white blood cells), to development (like the formation of limbs) and even cell death. Incidentally, it also plays a role in sperm production, which kinda makes sense because of how important it is for cell differentiation and development.
The body doesn’t produce a “blocker” for these receptors, which is the function that the drug in the study, YCT-529, performs. This actually mimics the loss of RARa signaling in a vitamin A deficiency, which unsurprisingly, causes fertility problems (among a host of other symptoms).
This is a different approach from “traditional” hormonal contraception, where the most common pills (progesterone only or progesterone-estrogen) activate the same receptors that the body usually activates (and this is what the person above you was referring to) - but in way that prevents the regular cycle from progressing. The fact that the body has these “natural levers” that regulate this process is the reason why birth-control pills have existed for decades - we just push those buttons harder (I’m not denying there are consequences to this, I’m just pointing out the buttons exist). There is no such mechanism for sperm production however, so scientists have been looking at all steps that lead to sperm being produced trying to find something they can block, and that hopefully won’t have terrible consequences elsewhere.
I 100% agree that calling either method “more complicated” or “more natural” or “easier" is wrong. But we cannot gloss over the fact that this drug is a compound that is novel to the human body, and that it works through mechanisms that we only have a limited understanding over, while the other is inherently less risky (because most of its effects are to mimic the body’s normal responses) and, at this time, much better understood.
Hopefully this will prove to be a very safe and effective drug, and that responsibility for contraception is equally divided because of it, but this needs to be proven first.
Also sorry for the wall of text, but it’s kinda in my ballpark so I sort of ran with it.
Nether method is more complicated or more natural or “easier.” It’s fiddling with hormones to decrease fertility.
Your personal perception is that because when women are pregnant they can’t get pregnant, they should be the ones to have their hormones fiddled with, despite the risk of death, that has, thus far not been shown in male hormonal birth control. That’s got nothing to do with science.
I’m sorry to call you out, but I think you’re disregarding a valid point and establishing a false equivalence between this contraceptive method, and traditional hormone-based methods.
Please let me elaborate. This drug is not hormone-based. It works by blocking a receptor called “RAR-alpha” that exists in every cell’s nucleus, and it works as a switch that controls gene transcription - it determines what the cell eventually produces and does. The body chops up vitamin A and uses it to trigger this receptor, and we know that it plays a role in many different processes, from cell differentiation (including formation of the heart, nervous system, and white blood cells), to development (like the formation of limbs) and even cell death. Incidentally, it also plays a role in sperm production, which kinda makes sense because of how important it is for cell differentiation and development.
The body doesn’t produce a “blocker” for these receptors, which is the function that the drug in the study, YCT-529, performs. This actually mimics the loss of RARa signaling in a vitamin A deficiency, which unsurprisingly, causes fertility problems (among a host of other symptoms).
This is a different approach from “traditional” hormonal contraception, where the most common pills (progesterone only or progesterone-estrogen) activate the same receptors that the body usually activates (and this is what the person above you was referring to) - but in way that prevents the regular cycle from progressing. The fact that the body has these “natural levers” that regulate this process is the reason why birth-control pills have existed for decades - we just push those buttons harder (I’m not denying there are consequences to this, I’m just pointing out the buttons exist). There is no such mechanism for sperm production however, so scientists have been looking at all steps that lead to sperm being produced trying to find something they can block, and that hopefully won’t have terrible consequences elsewhere.
I 100% agree that calling either method “more complicated” or “more natural” or “easier" is wrong. But we cannot gloss over the fact that this drug is a compound that is novel to the human body, and that it works through mechanisms that we only have a limited understanding over, while the other is inherently less risky (because most of its effects are to mimic the body’s normal responses) and, at this time, much better understood.
Hopefully this will prove to be a very safe and effective drug, and that responsibility for contraception is equally divided because of it, but this needs to be proven first.
Also sorry for the wall of text, but it’s kinda in my ballpark so I sort of ran with it.