Taking a New Look At Contraceptives

The article by N.W. Pirie (The Scientist, January 26, 1987, p. 19) calls for a renewed search for novel methods of birth control. Pirie is right in highlighting this as a neglected area worth more attention than it currently receives. Spermicides are a logical choice to interrupt fertility, and the only major drawback of current products is a moderate failure rate. Pirie rightly points to the need to aggressively apply insights into sperm function to contraceptive development. As Pine suggests,

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As Pine suggests, interfering with hyaluronidase, the sperm enzyme that allows penetration of the outer ovum vestments, may be particularly appropriate. From his research in the 1940s, the concept of preventing sperm penetration of the ovum by enzyme inhibition has emerged. Considerable work has since been done. A good review is L.J.D. Zaneveld's article in Research Frontiers in Fertility Regulation, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 1-14, 1982.

Present vaginal contraceptives use non-ionic surfactant compounds such as nonoxynol-9 as their active ingredient. No new active ingredients have been introduced for some years now, but several, such as Dpropranolol, are under development. The recent surge in litigation involving vaginal spermicides may force the manufacturers to remove nonoxynol-9 from the marketplace purely for economic reasons. This would be particularly troublesome not only because new compounds are several years away from the marketplace, but because contraceptives using nonoxynol-9 have been shown to reduce significantly ...

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