Скачать или смотреть Scientists create monthly birth control pill

(4 Dec 2019) FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: apus127650

Birth control pills work great if women remember to take them every day but missing doses can mean a surprise pregnancy.
Now scientists have figured out how to pack a month's supply into one capsule.
The trick: A tiny star-shaped gadget that unfolds in the stomach and gradually releases the drug.
The experimental capsule is still years away from drugstores, but researchers reported Wednesday that it worked as designed in a key test in animals.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is investing $13 million for further development of the once-a-month pill, in hopes of eventually improving family planning options in developing countries.
"It has a lot of potential," said Dr. Beatrice Chen, a family planning specialist at the University of Pittsburgh, who wasn't involved in the new research.
Today, women who want the convenience of long-lasting contraception can choose among various devices, from a weekly patch to a monthly vaginal ring to an IUD that lasts for years.
It wasn't clear that "the Pill" — one of the most popular forms of birth control because it's cheap and easy to use — ever could join that list. Pills of all sorts generally pass through the body in a day.
A team from the lab of Massachusetts Institute of Technology inventor Robert Langer engineered a fix to protect pills from the harsh environment of the digestive system.
The star-shaped device has six arms, and each holds a certain medication dose.
The device is folded inside an ordinary-sized capsule. Swallow the capsule and stomach acid dissolves the coating, letting the star unfold.
It's too big to fit through the stomach's exit but not big enough to cause an obstruction.
As medication dissolves out of each of the arms, the device breaks down until it can safely pass through the digestive system.
One of the developers Dr. Giovanni Traversco, said birth control could just be the beginning of how to use the pill.
"And certainly one of the things that we've considered, particularly with contraception, is also combining some of the work that we've done for HIV with the work that we've done for contraception to again protect people from, for example, HIV AIDS infection as well as provide contraception," said Traversco.
Langer and Traverso's team first used the technology to try turning daily drugs for malaria and HIV into capsules that lasted a week or two.
They also are experimental, but longer-lasting pills one day could help patients with serious diseases better stick with treatment.
A logical next attempt: A month-long oral contraceptive.
Pittsburgh's Chen cautioned that more safety testing is required, including how well the experimental capsule breaks down and what's the proper dose of different hormones, before this can be tested in women.
Other questions include whether the device dissolves in the same way in different people.
But if it pans out, Chen said it would be exciting to try combining both contraception and HIV drugs into the same capsule, particularly for developing countries where women are at high risk of the virus that causes AIDS.

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