Getting Closer to Perfecting a Male Contraceptive Pill

Researchers may finally be close to perfecting the long-elusive male birth control pill, even as some experts question how valuable such a drug may be.

The pill, developed by the Dutch company Organon, is based on the synthetic hormone desogestrel, which is already used in some versions of the contraceptive pill for women. Because desogestrel suppresses levels of the male hormone testosterone, the male pill also includes testosterone.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh said last week that they gave the drug for six months to 30 men in Shanghai and 30 in Edinburgh. Within three months, sperm counts of men receiving the highest dosage dropped to zero. The team said the researchers observed no serious side effects, such as reduced libido or impotence, although some men did have increased appetites.

More testing will be required, but the drug could be available commercially in the United States in as few as five years, the researchers said.

Many groups have long sought a male pill to alleviate the contraceptive burden that now falls almost entirely on women, but critics believe that few women will trust their boyfriends or husbands to use the pill regularly.

The attitude of many women toward the pill was expressed by one young Irish woman, who told the Bloomberg News Service: “I’d rather swallow 15 tablets a day until I am 70 than give my boyfriend any control whatsoever over my biological clock.”

Possible Autism Therapy Has Experts Worried

A physician at Rush Children’s Hospital in Chicago has discovered a possible new treatment for autism, but infectious disease specialists fear it could foster the emergence of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms.

Dr. Richard Sandler treated 11 autistic children with the recently approved antibiotic vancomycin. Vancomycin is considered a treatment of last resort for many bacterial infections because it is the only drug that will kill many germs resistant to all other antibiotics. Physicians hesitate to use it widely for fear that bugs will develop resistance to it as well.

Sandler reported in the July Journal of Child Neurology that 10 of the 11 treated children showed improvements, as measured by conventional neuropsychological testing, but that the improvements disappeared within a few months.

Although many parents have called physicians in an attempt to have their autistic children treated, Sandler cautioned that vancomycin should not be widely used until researchers can determine if it is a genuine discovery or a false lead.

Cholesterol Matters at Young Age, Team Says

It’s never too early to start worrying about cholesterol levels, according to researchers from Northwestern University Medical School.

High cholesterol levels are a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke in middle-aged and elderly people, but the new study is the first to show that they are also a problem for younger individuals.

Dr. Jeremiah Stamler and his colleagues studied nearly 82,000 men, ages 18 to 39, who were followed for as long as 34 years. They reported in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Assn. (https://jama.ama-assn.org) that men with the highest levels of cholesterol were two to 3 1/2 times as likely to die of heart disease as men with healthful levels.

On average, the men with the highest levels died four to nine years earlier than those with normal levels. Among men in their 20s, they found that the risk of dying young doubled for every 40 points of increase in cholesterol levels above the normal value of 200 milligrams per deciliter.

Report Finds Drug May Block Kidney Damage

Acetylcysteine, a drug already used to treat a variety of lung diseases and overdoses of painkillers, can prevent the kidney damage that often occurs when contrast agents are used to enhance the clarity of X-rays and CT scans, German physicians have found.

Dr. Martin Tepel and his colleagues at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum in Herne studied 83 patients who needed CT scans but whose kidneys had already been damaged by illness. Half received a placebo and half received acetylcysteine on the day before the CT scan and again on the same day.

Tepel’s team reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine (https://www.nejm.com) that only 2% of the patients who received acetylcysteine showed a reduction in kidney function, compared with 21% of those who received a placebo.

Campaign to Prevent SIDS in Black Babies

Only 31% of African American parents place their infants on their backs to sleep, compared with 47% of white parents, according to a new study released Wednesday by the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission.

Placing infants on their stomachs or sides to sleep is a major risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, a leading cause of death among babies. That finding may help explain why black infants have a higher risk of dying from SIDS, the commission said. Black parents are also more likely to place heavy quilts, comforters and pillows in infants’ cribs, which further increases the risk.

In 1998, 2,259 U.S. babies died of SIDS, a rate of 64 deaths per 100,000 babies. Among blacks, however, the rate was 128 deaths per 100,000. Because of these findings, the commission has launched a new “safe sleep” campaign, primarily on Black Entertainment Television, to warn parents of the risks. Brochures will be available at more than 3,000 clinics around the country.

Smokers Found to Live Longer with Disabilities

Smokers not only die earlier than nonsmokers, but they spend longer periods living with disabilities, according to a new Dutch study.

The results are considered somewhat surprising because many experts thought that nonsmokers would suffer more disability simply because they live longer.

Dr. Wilma Nusselder and her colleagues at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, studied 5,500 people ages 15 to 74 living in the area of Eindhoven and 7,500 elderly living in the U.S.

They report in the August Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health that, for every age group, the prevalence of disability was lower among nonsmokers than among smokers and former smokers. Stopping smoking did, however, lower the risk of having a disability.

Nonsmokers in general lived fewer years with disability despite living longer. Not only did they suffer fewer smoking-related disabilities, such as heart disease, but they also recovered from disabilities more quickly.

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Medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II can be reached at thomas.maugh@latimes.com.