Dr Brian Nguyen: University of Southern California Obstetrician-Gynaecologist on male birth control gel

Male birth control may be on its way – in gel form. 

It’s a hormonal gel that men rub on their shoulders, which has been developed at the University of Southern California (USC).  

USC Obstetrician-Gynaecologist, Dr Brian Nguyen told Jack Tame “It’s very similar to female contraceptive methods – we have so much experience with it.” 

Nguyen said “The entire factory is left intact, you’re just telling factory to stop production.” 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Jack Team nineteen past five. Researchers in the US say
that male birth control is on the way. Yep, they're
making progress on a birth control for men that is
long acting and reversible. The product under development is a
hormonal gel that men rub on their shoulders. Doctor Brian

(00:20):
Newan is an obstection obstetrician gynecologist at the University of
Southern California who worked on trials for the gel.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Good to be talking with you, Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
How does the gel work?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
You know, start from the top. Basically, it's very similar
to female hormonal contraceptive methods, and one of the best
things about that is that we have so much experience
with female hormonal contraceptives that we're very confident about the
safety universibility of male contraceptions. So essentially, the hormones give
a signal up to the brain, telling the brain to

(00:58):
send signals down to the test is to stop production
of UH sperm, and what that means is that the
entire factory is left intact. You're just telling the factory
to stop the production, and that's basically it. So UH
these hormones over the course of several weeks in this case,
about you know, four to eight weeks are able to

(01:21):
suppress sperm down to you know, in many cases zero
or what we call our criteria for male interceptions, which
is at a million.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
How does the application work? Why do why do mean
rub the gel on these shoulders of all places?

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Yeah? You know, in thinking about you know, places to
apply the gel, we're really thinking about how to avoid
transference of the gel to uh, you know, a child
or sexual partner. And so the shoulder seems to a
really easy to access but also low transference risk area.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
And in terms of effectiveness, how does it compare to say,
a female contraceptive pill.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Yeah, it's a good question right there. Our trial is
not necessarily like a head to head trial at this point,
and we can't necessarily release the results of the prenancy
prevention aspect of the trial, but we are very encouraged.
We actually think that there are many aspects that are
going to make this better than female homorical contraceptives.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Are there any side effects?

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, with all hormonal methods, we do expect side effects,
and in this case we are thinking about acne, weight gain,
mood changes, libido changes. But again when I say libido changes, right,
that means it can go up or down. Yeah, and
we've had you know, very you know, positive you know

(02:48):
feedback from our participants.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Yeah. How likely is it then, that you know, we
might see this on the market sometime soon?

Speaker 2 (02:57):
You know, people always talk about this whole five to
ten years timeline. But if anything that has that COVID
has taught me is that, you know, with enough will
of the people and enough need, you can speed things
up quite fast. So I'm relying on folks like you
to spread the word.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Do you reckon guys are going to be into it?
You know, like I don't want to cast dispersions over
forty nine point nine seven percent of our population. But
you know, something just tells me that from a kind
of attitude perspective, men might be slightly less responsible on
this front.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
You know. It's interesting, you know, for female contraception, we
don't necessarily expect all women to want to use it either,
and so to expect that a large swath of men
are going to want to use it, it's kind of
sitting in the bar a bit too high. But what
does matter, though, right, is that there are men who
are in committed relationships who have seen their female partners

(03:53):
in dure side effects or just various access issues with contraception,
and therefore they want to step in and not to
mention that there are men who you know, are more
and more concerned about their own assets and want to
be able to avoid the risk of unplanned pregnancy as well.
You just don't hear about it very much until it's
too late.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, hey, thank you so much, Brian. We will watch
this space with keen interest, no doubt. We appreciate your time.
That is doctor Brian new here. Thanks Brian. There's doctor
Brian Newan, who's one of the researchers at the University
of Southern California behind this new gel. For more from
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(04:34):
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