European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 20, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse                                A Fly Robert Steinbrook a of Angeles times researchers have shown for the first time that a male contraceptive that works like the female birth control Pill can be highly effective in preventing pregnancy. I in a one year study a world health organization task a Force found that weekly injections of testosterone a Ena thate a synthetic variant of a naturally occurring lie hormone Quot can maintain Safe stable and effective land reversible  a i there was one pregnancy among the 157 Fertile a couples who used continuing testosterone injections As a their Only form of birth control for up to a year according a to a report in saturdays Issue of the lancet a British a medical journal. I this failure rate is lower than typical one year failure a rates for birth control pills three per 100 and condoms l 12per100. I the preliminary Success opens the door for a researchers to develop a male contraceptive that is a suitable for widespread use such As a longer acting a hormone injection that can work for three to four months. I a we Are testing a concept. This will not necessarily be a the final product a said or. C. Alvin Paulsen one of the a study s Lead researchers and a professor of Medicine at a the University of Washington. I but one popular possibility a testosterone birth control a Pill appears very unlikely Quot in the foreseeable future Quot a because it carries an unacceptable risk of liver damage a Paulsen said. A higher concentration of testosterone a a reaches the liver when taken by Mouth than when a injected. I currently condoms vasectomies and abstinence Are a the Only forms of birth control available to men. Earlier this year the . National research Council citing a dearth of effective birth control methods to meet varying medical land social needs called for a marked increase in the number and types of contraceptives for both men and women. Researchers have known for years that repeated male hormone injections can cause a reversible condition in which men produce Little or no sperm. In a manner similar to the female birth control Pill testosterone injections trick Aman s body into shutting off the Normal biochemical signals from the brain that direct the testes to produce sperm. But the new study represents the first formal test to determine if the hormone injections Are in fact an effective contraceptive. La your health Hope for a male contraceptive previous studies Only measured sperm counts and couples used additional contraception. Since the sperm count Only checks one Point in time there was no Way to know from those studies if a Zero sperm count As measured in the Laboratory would translate into effective birth control. This is a study that should have been done a Long time ago. But it is better late than never Quot said or. Gabriel Bialy chief of the contraceptive development Branch at the National Institute of child health and human development in Bethesda my. A major drawback of the current regimens the frequency of the injections. Another is the failure to reduce the sperm count to Zero in about 35 percent of the men studied Bialy said. The who task Force acknowledged the Quot obvious impracticality Quot of weekly injections but maintained that the first test had to be conducted with a hormonal regimen known to be Safe and reversible. Side effects included weight gain a an average of 6 pounds a and acne Paulsen said. There were no behaviour changes. The Long term potential hazards from testosterone injections include heart and prostate disease. While it Only takes one sperm to fertilize an egg most Fertile men have a great excess of sperm. A Normal male sperm count ranges from 20 million to 150 million sperm per Millilitre of semen. The male contraceptive study initially involved 271 healthy Fertile men from seven countries including four dozen couples from the Seattle area and couples from China Australia and France. The researchers identified the men whose sperm counts dropped to Zero following the weekly 200-Milligram injections As measured by the examination of semen specimens under a Microscope once every two weeks. A total of 114 men withdrew from the study for a variety of reasons including 68 whose sperm counts did not drop to Zero within six months. After the hormone injections began it took an average of four months for the menus sperm counts to drop to Zero. When this was achieved the men and their sexual partners abandoned other Means of contraception. After the hormone injections were stopped it took an average of 3.7 months for sperm counts to return to Normal. Some men still have mild decreases in sperm counts but follow up data is incomplete the report said. To Date 10 pregnancies have been recorded in the recovery phase. The who task Force is now studying several Hundred men whose sperm counts drop to Low Levels a 5 million sperm per Millilitre or less a after testosterone injections but not to Zero. Male contraception researchers Are hopeful of a similar Success with such men. It would greatly increase the number who might Benefit and Quot provide the necessary impetus to create compounds where the injections can be postponed to every three or four  Paulsen said. Such a longer acting preparation might be a different form of testosterone analogous to inject Able female contraceptives. Depo Provera and other such inject Able contraceptives Are available in Western Europe and some third world nations but not in the United states. Preliminary tests of this approach May begin in Germany next year. Another possibility according to Bialy and Paulsen Are injections of both testosterone and a drug known As a Hrh antagonist which shuts off almost All the Normal hormonal stimuli to the male sex organs. Preliminary tests of this approach Are under Way at the University of Washington and Vanderbilt University in Nashville tenn., and in Western Europe.  glue Ftp a a a Christma Holiday Bonus All children a Christmas books have been discounted 25% or More from regular Price now available at most stars and stripes bookstores. Tuesday november 20, 1990 the stars and stripes a a a