#sperm

[mindblowingscience]

Insecticide exposure has been linked to lower sperm concentration in adult men worldwide, according to a new review of 25 studies spanning almost 50 years. The research team from Italy and the US says it's the most thorough systematic review of the topic so far. These are strong findings as their method takes into account each study's limitations, so their published paper recommends reducing exposure to the two types of insecticides studied to preserve male fertility and increase the changes of parenthood. "Understanding how insecticides affect sperm concentration in humans is critical given their ubiquity in the environment and documented reproductive hazards," says first author Lauren Ellis, a population health scientist at Northeastern University. "Insecticides are a concern for public health." She notes people are primarily exposed to insecticides through the consumption of contaminated food and water.

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[nobrashfestivity]

Jean Painlevé, The Love Life of an Octopus,1967

[reasonsforhope]

A new drug was able to quickly and temporarily immobilize sperm in male mice, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, a discovery researchers described as a “game-changer” that could pave the way for a male contraceptive pill and could ultimately allow men to share equal responsibility with women for birth control.

A single oral dose of the drug immobilized mice sperm for up to two and a half hours and was 100% effective in the first two hours, the researchers said.

Treated mice showed normal mating behavior but none impregnated a mate despite 52 different attempts to do so, the researchers said, compared to almost a third of mice impregnating mates after being treated with an inactive control substance.

The drug is fast-acting—Melanie Balbach, one of the study’s authors and a researcher at Weill Cornell Medicine, said it worked within 30 to 60 minutes—and works by inhibiting an enzyme needed for sperm to function.

It is also temporary, with efficacy dropping to 91% at three hours and fertility returning to normal by the next day.

These properties set the drug apart from many of the other efforts to develop a male contraceptive, the researchers said, which often rely on hormones to control fertility and can take weeks or months to be effective or to wear off.

The study demonstrates proof-of-concept for “safe, non-hormonal, on-demand, male contraceptives,” the researchers said, and while it may work in theory any product will be many years and a great deal of testing in the future.

-via Forbes, 2/14/23

And there is ANOTHER breakthrough with a different method from just two months later:

A ground-breaking contraceptive pill for men could be just around the corner after a major genetic breakthrough. Scientists at Washington State University have identified a gene which temporarily renders sperm infertile after they remove it.

The research team discovered a protein encoded by this gene, found solely in the testicular tissue of most mammals, which reduced sperm counts and deformed remaining sperm to make them incapable of fertilizing an egg when altered. The potentially historic breakthrough contraceptive pill would also have no hormonal side-effects and could be additionally help control animal overpopulation — replacing castration.

Crucially, the destabilization of the infertility protein is not permanent, meaning sperm will recover once the person or animal stops taking the treatment. Scientists have hailed the discovery as potentially important for the future of the human race. In their study, researchers identified the expression of a gene called Arrdc5 in the testicular tissue of mice, pigs, cattle, and humans...

However, disrupting the functions of this protein will not require any hormonal interference, a key hurdle considering the multiple roles testosterone plays beyond sperm production in men, including the building of bone mass and muscle strength as well as red blood cell production. The team also says that designing a drug which only targets this protein would further make it easily reversible as a contraceptive.

-via Study Finds, 4/19/23

Note: Please excuse the cissexist language from the sources here, which I have not edited out for accuracy, etc. The Forbes article does respectfully discuss trans and nonbinary people and their birth control needs further down.

[misterlemonztenth]

12-08-23 | misterlemonztenth.tumblr.com/archive

[kylesgarrick]

proving @gazmialmagemela wrong

answer quick

[ap0fenia]

[mindblowingscience]

Alan Turing might be best know for his work helping to crack Germany's "Enigma" communications code during the second world war. But he also came up with a theory where patterns can form just through chemical compounds spreading out (diffusing) and reacting with one another. This became known as reaction-diffusion theory for pattern formation. Ph.D. student James Cass and I recently published a study in Nature Communications that revealed the tail of a sperm, known as a flagellum, generates patterns as it moves—and that these patterns can be described by Turing's theory. Patterns formed by chemical interactions create a large variety of shapes and colors such as spirals, stripes and spots. They are everywhere in nature, and are believed to be behind animal markings such as those on zebras and leopards, the whorl of seeds in a sunflower head and patterns formed by beach sand.

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[testoster0ne]

brandon

[wafflenika]

ready to receive sperm

[misterlemonztenth]

02-09-24 | misterlemonztenth.tumblr.com/archive

[mud1888]