Scientists created a once-a-month contraceptive pill, so women don’t have to worry about remembering to take a pill every single day. The tablet is still undergoing testing and has only been tried out on pigs. But once available for people, it would be another approach to the existing range of women’s contraceptive options.
The pill consists of a six-armed star-shaped polymer structure that’s wrapped up tight in a gelatine capsule. Once ingested, the gelatine dissolves in the stomach to release the star capsule, which opens up and sits in the stomach for a minimum of three weeks, releasing synthetic hormones gradually to prevent pregnancy. The team describe how they designed the pill in a research paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The type of capsule and polymer system of the pill is a drug delivery system that has been tested on animals before, but for anti-malarial drugs and HIV antiretroviral therapy. The method has also been tested on humans for other medicines.
What’s unique about this research is that it’s the first one to use such a capsule to deliver contraceptives. It is also the first to be able to release a drug over such a long timeframe. The extended time granted was thanks to a redesign of the pill. The restructuring involved tweaking the structure to increase the surface area.
According to co-author Prof Robert Langer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the enhancement means the approach could be applied to an even broader range of applications now. Langer said:
I hope there will be pills that people could swallow that could last for any length of time to treat different diseases, like mental health diseases and opioid addiction, Alzheimer’s, Aids.
Throughout the study, they kept modifying the structure of the capsule slightly and monitoring the rate of hormone release. Most importantly, they were checking the system to make sure it could withstand the acid conditions of the stomach. Once they found two forms that worked, they tested them on six female pigs.
The testing did not focus on if the pills could prevent pregnancy. This phase of the research was to examine the level of the synthetic progestogen hormone released within the body. They recorded the levels daily and compared them with the levels for five other pigs given a “daily” oral contraceptive pill of the same hormone.
The results revealed that the once-a-month pill provided a slower and more prolonged release of the hormone than the medicine taken daily. By the 29th day, the hormone was still present in the animals’ blood. X-ray imaging did show that the polymer structure of the monthly pill has begun to break down as the month progressed, but that did not affect the levels of hormones.
Conclusion
Contraceptive pills that can be taken orally are a popular form of birth control because they don’t require a clinical procedure to administer. In the developing world, healthcare services are limited, and the more manageable the method is, the better.
The vice president of the UK’s Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, Dr. Diana Mansour, received the idea positively saying:
The concept of a monthly oral contraceptive pill is attractive and has the potential to broaden contraceptive choice. There are already many options for women who were looking for an alternative to a daily pill, including the copper IUD and contraceptive implant, both of which last for years before needing to be replaced. These are more effective than oral contraception with fewer than one woman in 100 becoming pregnant each year using these longer-acting reversible contraceptives, compared to around nine in 100 women taking the pill.
It’s not uncommon for women taking the pill to miss a dose and risk getting pregnant. To have the option of swallowing a pill only once a month could reduce the risk of such errors in use, and minimize the number of unplanned pregnancies.
