A Birth Control Pill For Men Tested 99% Effective & It's Moving A Step Closer To Reality

Birth control pills might not be just for women for much longer.

An experimental male contraceptive pill was found to be 99% effective in preventing pregnancies in mice, and scientists say it could open the door for human men to use the pills in the future.

They say the contraceptive is non-hormonal and it had no obvious side effects on mice, Sky News reports. If the same is true in humans, it could be a game changer for men — and women.

Researchers were due to report their findings at a meeting of the American Chemical Society on Thursday, although they haven't released the full study yet.

While women have spent decades using many forms of birth control like the pill, patches and IUDs, men have only ever had two options: vasectomy and condoms.

It's unclear how often a man would have to take a birth control pill at this point, but that'll likely become more clear with further study.

“Scientists have been trying for decades to develop an effective male oral contraceptive, but there are still no approved pills on the market," said researcher Abdullah Al Noman in a press release by the American Chemical Society. Noman added that other attempts to make a male birth control pill have caused side effects such as weight gain and depression, but the hope with this one is to avoid those problems.

"We wanted to develop a non-hormonal male contraceptive to avoid these side effects," said Noman.

Instead of targeting testosterone, as most other attempts at creating male contraceptive pills have done in the past, Noman and his fellow researchers targeted a gene to render the mice temporarily sterile.

Four weeks of the pill caused mice to have "dramatically reduced sperm counts and was 99% effective in preventing pregnancy, without any observable side effects," the news release says.

The mice were able to reproduce again about 4-6 weeks after they stopped taking the compound.

The scientists are aiming to start clinical trials in humans in the second half of 2022.

If all goes well, who knows — maybe we'll have male birth control pills in the very near future!

This article's cover image was used for illustrative purposes only.