Paris: A study on the prototype contraception says that worries of the male pill hindering a man’s chance of fathering a child are unfounded.
The male pill shall be used as an alternative to the three conventional male contraceptive methods - the condom, withdrawal and vasectomy - which are regarded by many as insufficiently reliable or difficult to reverse.
The pill uses the hormone androgen, or a mixture of androgen and progestagen, to suppress sperm production to zero or negligible levels.
China and Europe are yet to conduct two large-scale trials. However, doctors in the United States and Australia have already assessed the outcome of 30 smaller trials, involving around 1,500 men in all.
All participants recovered fertility after they stopped taking the hormones. On an average, it took 3.4 months to achieve this, defined as a threshold of 20 million sperm per milliliter.
"These findings increase the promise of new contraceptive drugs, allowing men to share more fairly the satisfaction and burden of family planning," said Peter Liu of the ANZAC Research Institute at the University of Sydney.
The findings of the study were published in the British medical weekly The Lancet on Saturday.
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