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Researchers Found Perfect Contraceptives In Traditional Chinese Medicine (inverse.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the medical-miracles dept.

hackingbear writes: Researchers at U.C. Berkeley found a birth control that was hormone-free, 100 percent natural, resulted in no side effects, didn't harm either eggs nor sperm, could be used in the long-term or short-term, and -- perhaps the best part of all -- could be used either before or after conception, from ancient Chinese folk medicine... "Because these two plant compounds block fertilization at very, very low concentrations -- about 10 times lower than levels of levonorgestrel in Plan B -- they could be a new generation of emergency contraceptive we nicknamed 'molecular condoms,'" team leader Polina Lishko.

27 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. At least some B's in there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Used after conception for emergency contraception but works by preventing the sperm and egg meeting, that is contradictory.

    1. Re:At least some B's in there by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

      The actual paper is paywalled, but the abstract says nothing about working "the morning after", so the journalist who wrote TFA may have just made that up.

    2. Re:At least some B's in there by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2, Informative

      Used after conception for emergency contraception but works by preventing the sperm and egg meeting, that is contradictory.

      It only seems contradictory because you don't know that fertilization of an egg can take up to four day. That is correct, after engaging in sex, females are not immediately impregnated.

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    3. Re:At least some B's in there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      It's doesn't seem contradictory to you because you don't know what conception means. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conception. It's a terrible summary. I think we can all agree on that.

    4. Re:At least some B's in there by Razed+By+TV · · Score: 4, Informative

      Was able to read the study here:
      http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/05/09/1700367114.full

      PDF here: http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...

  2. PNAS by Petersko · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well, the actual paper was published very recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, which is reputable. They don't seem to be selling anything.

    http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...

    1. Re:PNAS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There's a huge difference between the scientific paper and whatever it was that Slashdot linked to. The Slashdot link made all kinds of vague claims where it wasn't clear what they even meant.

      Take, for example, the claim that the new contraceptive could be used before or after conception. Did they mean before or after sex? Or did they mean before or after the sperm enters the egg cell and the egg cell ditches it extra set of chromosomes to become diploid? Or did they mean after the fertilized egg implants in the uterus. Because it can be a couple days between having sex and actual implantation.

    2. Re:PNAS by jellomizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      However there is a lot of claims here. In general trying to describe the perfect birth control. With the promise of it originated from some ancient Chinese secret. Smells fishy to me.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    3. Re:PNAS by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was peer reviewed, published in a prestigious journal, and they aren't selling anything. So I don't see anything "fishy" about it. It is often hard to get funding to study naturally occurring substances, because they can't be patented, so there isn't any money in it. The chemicals they studied were extracted from mangoes and dandelion roots.

    4. Re: PNAS by belg4mit · · Score: 2

      Side-effects are effects other than those desired.

      As for the mechanism, the research indicates that the compounds interfere with sperm's ability to swim powerfully, which is necessary to enter the egg. The interference is non-hormonal and has no side-effects.

      --
      Were that I say, pancakes?
    5. Re: PNAS by ClickOnThis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Also I can't square "has zero side effects" with "blocks conception". It either does something or it doesn't. There is no such thing as "zero side effects" for compounds that are active in the body.

      If the only thing it does is block conception, then it has zero side effects. I'll wait to hear whether that's actually true, but the definition of a side effect is an effect other than the primary one.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    6. Re:PNAS by kqs · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It certainly seems worth a closer look and avoids many of the common "too good to be true" signs.

      But too much crap science makes it through peer review and into good journals. I'm expecting "too good to be true" once more people study it.

      So "skeptical but willing to be convinced" seems the right frame of mind for this. Birth control with fewer side effects would be a great thing for the world. (Less opposition to birth control from religious groups in the US would be even better, but I don't expect miracles.)

    7. Re:PNAS by wickerprints · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I agree with the sentiment to be cautious of such extraordinary claims, which, to quote the familiar saying by Sagan and Truzzi, "require extraordinary evidence."

      That said, do not assume that traditional Chinese medicine does not carry the possibility of valuable scientific and medical discoveries. The relatively recent discovery of the potent antimalarial properties of artemisinin was due to research in traditional Chinese herbs and medicines. Now, to be sure, there are a lot of things that traditional Chinese medicine gets wrong, but after thousands of years of trial and error and seeing what works and what doesn't, the resulting herbal pharmacopoeia almost invariably contains useful information about a myriad of plant compounds whose properties have not yet been analyzed by Western medicine.

    8. Re: PNAS by omnichad · · Score: 2

      no known side-effects.

      FTFY. Do we really understand the human body so well that we know that nothing else would react to those in the same way? Particularly, other parts of the body with flagella - like the cilia in the respiratory tract.

    9. Re:PNAS by michael_wojcik · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Frankly, the "thousands of years of trial and error" are largely irrelevant. Pretty much any large collection of plant extracts will include many compounds with pharmacological effects on humans, so there's a high probability that some of them will be 1) previously unknown to medical science (because medical science takes time, and it hasn't had a lot of it yet), and 2) useful.

      There's no magic to traditional blah blah whatever nonsense. You assemble a great big grab-bag of random junk, and there's a good chance of something interesting being in among the rubbish.

  3. Re:Wait! What? by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 3, Informative

    - news for nerds
    - news for people who can't get laid

    Where's the difference?

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  4. Irony by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2
    From TFA:

    But there are two plant compounds that can prevent sperm from doing this, no matter how valiantly they may try — lupeol, found in mango and dandelion root, and pristimerin, from a plant called the “thunder god vine,”

    "Thunder God Vine" prevents pregnancy, but sounds like a great name for your penis.

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    1. Re:Irony by michael_wojcik · · Score: 2

      Referring to your penis as "Thunder God Vine" may well help prevent pregnancy, at least among potential partners with self-respect.

  5. Re:Let me guess ... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

    Reading /. or Reddit? Living in your parents' basement?

    Also Dungeons and Dragons. That's why the Catholic church dislikes it: it's also 100% effective.

    (with apologies to someone. I can't remember. SMBC?)

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  6. Re:In other news, te Trump administartion announce by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What stage of grief is 'idiotic snark'?

    Get on with it.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  7. An extra note by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 2

    Birth control pills are often taken not because a woman wants to prevent an unplanned pregnancy but because such hormones help deal with acne.

    1. Re: An extra note by Baron_Yam · · Score: 2

      Some women bleed like a stuck pig, or have exceptionally long or painful periods. Hormonal birth control basically takes over and gives them more statistically 'normal' symptoms. When you're dealing with those issues, the pregnancy prevention really is a side effect.

      On the other hand, some women take them without skipping a week in order to completely suppress their cycle. I'm not sure if there's any long term issues with that, but assuming there aren't I've never understood why any and every woman wouldn't go with that option while on the pill.

  8. Re:Wait! What? by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 3, Funny

    He failed at his own joke. What a nerd.

    --
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  9. Not a contraceptive and far from perfect by pesho · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is another PR statement that inflates the actual findings so much that they become unrecognizable. For those interested in the details, the original article is here (it is paywalled). The TL;DR version of the original article is as follows:

    1. 1. There is a protein (ABHD2) that controls sperm motility.
    2. 2. ABHD2 activated progesterone and is blocked by other steroid hormones.
    3. 3. After ovulation progesterone is released by the cumulus cells that surround the egg. This release of progesterone activates nearby sperm to move faster.
    4. 4. There is a class of compounds produced by plants that are called triterpenoids. Some of these compounds mimic steroid hormones.
    5. 5. By virtue of their ability to mimic steroid hormones two triterpenoids (pristimerin and lupeol) can bind to ABHD2 and block it in the same way steroid hormones do.

    These were the finding of the papers. Now look at the claims in the PR statement:

    1. 1. Traditional Chinese medicine. There is hardly a plant or organic matter that is not used for one purpose or other in traditional Chinese medicine (Traditional Chinese medicine is akin to internet porn - if something exists there is a traditional Chinese medicine made from it). Plants make insane diversity of chemical compounds. Anyone will be hard pressed to find a naturally occurring plant compound that does not exist in at least one plant used by traditional Chinese medicine. While this claim may technically be true, it is completely meaningless.
    2. 2. Contraceptive activity of the compounds. The compounds had marginal inhibitory effect (6-10%) on sperm motility when the sperm was activated with progesterone, and no effect on the motility of sperm not activated by progesterone. Will this prevent fertilization? The study did not report the results of experiments that will directly test the contraceptive effect of the compounds. This claims is obviously false.
    3. 3. The compounds are not hormonal. Technically speaking, they are not steroid hormones. In reality, they act as steroid hormones, otherwise they would not have been able to block ABHD2. This claims seems patently false to me.
    4. 4. "Perfect contraceptives". If you scan the research literature with the names of the compounds you will find that they exhibit all kinds of completely unrelated activities when applied to human cells. This means that one or more of the following are true; (i) these are "sticky" compounds that hit multiple targets; (ii) The compounds are not pure and is impossible to tell if what you observe is the activity of the compound or of the impurities (this happens very often when isolating compounds from plants); (iii) The compounds hit target that is important for many cell types in the body. Regardless of what the explanation is, these compounds are no "magic bullets". "Carpet bombing" seems to be more suitable analogy.
    1. Re: Not a contraceptive and far from perfect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What an idiotic response to the only response to this story to seriously evaluate the claims being made in the article.

      Congratulations on standing head and shoulders above all the other thoughtless douches in your stupidity. You've earned it!

  10. Re:No one needs to worry it will never see sales by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

    No patent, no marketing. Yep, we won't see this except in some unregulated "all natural" formula at a health food store that is too dilute to work reliably.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  11. Science media vs real science by MrLint · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So when I read "about 10 times lower than levels of levonorgestrel in Plan B"

    This comes off as crap designed to flog 'information' to the the ignorant public. But (and someone please correct me) this statement is meaningless. Any medication has an effective dosage, and method of function. Levonorgestrel and the chemicals mentioned in this article don't function in a similar manner. To compare the concentrations is meaningless, and leads people to believe in some false metric between them.