Male birth control

While 25 percent of women who use contraception use an oral birth control pill, no equivalent methods are currently available for men.

However, research from the College of Pharmacy laid the groundwork for the first hormone-free male birth control pill to enter clinical trials. The new drug, called YCT-529, is a first-in-class, hormone free, orally administered male contraceptive. Developed with Columbia University and YourChoice Therapeutics, YCT529 works as a contraceptive by stopping the production of sperm. The research found: 

• In male mice, the drug was 99 percent effective in preventing pregnancies within four weeks of use. 
• In male nonhuman primates, the drug lowered sperm counts within two weeks of starting the drug. 
• Both mice and nonhuman primates fully regained fertility after stopping the drug. No side effects from the drug were detected in either group.

“A safe and effective male pill will provide more options to couples...,” said Gunda Georg, Regents Professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry and corresponding author of the study. “It will allow a more equitable sharing of responsibility for family planning and provide reproductive autonomy for men.”

A Phase 1 clinical trial for the drug was completed successfully in 2024 and the drug is currently undergoing safety and efficacy testing in a second clinical trial.

Published March 13 in Nature Communications

Prey size affects carnivores

Research from the U of M illuminates how wolves, bears, and cougars—all found in Yellowstone National Park—compete for prey.

Scientists previously thought that when prey becomes scarce, predators become more aggressive toward each other, and that fewer resources meant dominant predators like wolves and bears will steal food from subordinate predators like cougars. A new study based on over two decades of data collected by a team of ecologists studying cougar predation in the park reveals the size of prey animals plays a surprisingly pivotal role in competition among predators. They found: 

• As larger prey like elk declined over the past few decades, cougars in Yellowstone began targeting smaller animals like deer. The smaller animals are easier to hunt, and cougars can kill and consume them more quickly while attracting less attention from more dominant predators. 
• When cougars hunt smaller prey, wolves and bears are less likely to steal their kills. 
• As cougars shifted to hunting smaller animals, the frequency with which wolves and bears displaced them from their kills decreased.

“This work really showcases the complex ways large carnivores make a living,” said lead author Jack Rabe, a graduate student in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. “We found that shifting cougar behavior is likely a key factor in the ecosystem’s stability. By opting for smaller prey, cougars reduce the amount of time they spend hunting to make up for kills lost to other carnivores. This allows them to maintain a relatively stable kill rate, which contributes to the overall balance of the predator-prey dynamics in the park.”

Published March 28 in Communications Biology

Early adult mortality

Death rates for adults aged 25-44 rose sharply during the Covid-19 pandemic and remain higher than expected post pandemic.

New U of M research shows heightened death rates during the pandemic intensified an already negative trend for early adults, which began around 2010. Early adult death rates in 2023 were about 70 percent higher than they might have been had death rates not begun rising about a decade before the pandemic.

Researchers from the U of M and Boston University analyzed death rates between 1999-2023. They found: 

• For early adults, the death rate jumped substantially between 2019 and 2021, the core pandemic years. In 2023, the death rate remained nearly 20 percent higher than in 2019. 
• Drug-related deaths are the single largest cause of 2023 excess mortality, compared with the mortality that would have been expected had earlier trends continued.

“The rise in opiate deaths has been devastating for Americans in early and middle adulthood,” said  Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, lead author and an associate professor in the College of Liberal Arts and Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation. “What we didn’t expect is how many different causes of death have really grown for these early adults. It’s drug and alcohol deaths, but it’s also car collisions, it’s circulatory and metabolic diseases—causes that are very different from each other. That tells us this isn’t one simple problem to fix, but something broader.”

Published January 25 in JAMA Network Open

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