Male contraceptive injection ‘Vasalgel’ could arrive by 2017

Men could be able to benefit from a new type contraception within three years, and it doesn’t involve condoms.

The non-profit organisation Parsemus Foundation, who are involved in the production of low-cost medical treatment options, are using baboons to conduct clinical trials on a pioneering male birth control injection that will apparently cost ‘less than a flat screen TV’.

The contraceptive injection is currently named Vasalgel, and the makers hope it will be cheap, long-lasting and most importantly, reversible. It involves a health professional injecting a ‘polymer’ into the vas deferens – a thick, muscular tube that connects the testes to the urethra and where sperm travel through to get to the penis.

So far, clinical trials have involved three male baboons being injected with the drug. Each male was then left to share living space with 10-15 female baboons for six months. Remarkably, none of the females became impregnated after the six months.

The drug makers say after a year they will be able to have more information about Vasalgel’s efficacy, with the hope for human clinical trials to start in 2015.

Should the man and his partner change their mind about children, the man can have the procedure reversed with another polymer gel that is injected to get rid of the Vasalgel that is working to block the sperm. The only downside about an injection contraceptive is that unlike condoms, they will not provide any protection against a whole range of sexually transmitted infections such as chlamydia, genital herpes, gonorrhoea, and many more.

Vasalgel’s official website says the contraceptive is a “long-acting, nonhormonal contraceptive similar to vasectomy but with one significant advantage: it is likely to be more reversible. The procedure is similar to a no-scalpel vasectomy, except a gel is injected into the vas deferens (the tube the sperm swim through) rather than cutting the vas (as is done in vasectomy). If a man wishes to restore flow of sperm, whether after months or years, the polymer is flushed out of the vas with another injection.”

The idea of Vasalgel partly came about from a different male contraceptive also in the works, tentatively named RISUG. Both block the vas deferens through the use of a gel, but RISUG and Vasalgel are formulated differently.

It is yet unclear for what time span the Vasalgel injection would be effective for as a contraceptive means, but the RISUG injection has been said to last for around 10 years.

A Parsemus Foundation spokesperson said: “We want to get Vasalgel on the market as soon as possible, but all the proper efficacy and safety testing needs to be completed. Vasalgel is currently in animal testing, with human trials expected to start in early 2015 and 2015-2016 (larger trials). If everything goes well and with enough public support, we hope to get Vasalgel on the market in 2016-2017.”

The company are now requesting public donations to aid the human clinical trials set to begin next year.

How migraine can do everyone’s head in at work

Are you a migraine sufferer? Or, are you an employer with employees that you are aware regularly suffer with them? If so, you will be delighted to hear that Medical Specialists® Pharmacy have gone to great lengths to make migraine treatment available for the thousands of people that need it after being inundated with requests for help from your fellow sufferers, and this help could enable you to get on with your day-to-day activities without the pain and stress associated with the condition.

Migraine is the most common neurological condition in the developed world. It is something much more intense and painful than a common headache, even though many people confuse the two. With an estimated one in four women and one in 12 men in the UK affected by migraines on a regular basis, this means around 15% of adults in the UK are suffering. Although sufferers may feel alone and isolated, migraine is a health problem even more prevalent than asthma, diabetes and epilepsy combined.

Despite this, it can be still misunderstood and underestimated in the workplace. Statistics indicate that over a third (34.3%) of sufferers are experiencing difficulty or discrimination in the workplace due to their condition. (The Migraine Trust, 2004).

Firstly, let’s look at some hard facts about migraine:

. Each year migraine causes a loss of over 25 million working days at a cost of around £2.25 billion to the economy.
. Migraine and chronic headache are the second most common reasons given for short term absence from work.
. A recent YouGov poll involving 2,105 people saw 15% of workers who pulled a ‘sickie’ used migraine as their excuse for a day off work.
. A survey conducted by The Migraine Trust in 2012 found that almost half (46.3%) of workers with migraine say they are unfairly untreated because of illness-related absence, over a third (40.5%) felt unsupported by their bosses and colleagues, and three in ten (30.5%) had received disciplinary action due to their health condition.

The main obstacle between fellow employees and the employer and their employees, is simply lack of awareness about migraines. Migraine pain can be excruciating for those afflicted, but an attack is often disregarded as ‘just a headache’. In addition, many employers are lacking understanding and not providing sufficient support for staff with migraines due to non-sufferers commonly using migraine as an excuse when they have a ‘sickie’ from work.

It is partly this reason why migraine sufferers feel isolated and unsupported, and employers should do their best to communicate with these particular employees, as even with the severe pain experienced during an attack, many sufferers will still continue to either attend or stay in work despite their productivity levels being negatively impacted.  This could have major implications for employers, both financially and with the subsequent drop in staff morale and productivity.

It is called ‘presenteeism’ when an employee still goes to work despite being unwell, and is rife amongst those with regular migraines and headaches because of the fear of reprisals from bosses.  Employers should have a fair and open communication policy with all employees – not just those with migraines – to reduce the risk of presenteeism, which can be problematic for everybody concerned.

The issue of presenteeism could be down to the fact some employers utilise strict absence record systems that focus on performance monitoring after a certain number of sick days have been reached. Some empathy needs to be shown though from the employer – otherwise stress and anxiety can be caused and exacerbate migraine attacks by acting as a trigger.

You as an employer should be aware that depending on the circumstances, migraine sufferers could be classed as having a ‘disability’ according to The Equality Act 2010.  It is employers’ responsibility to put into place appropriate conditions that make it easier for employees that suffer with migraines to actually do their job to a good standard and stop them being unfairly discriminated against.

Some helpful adjustments that employers can introduce for migraine sufferers may include: make sure employees have frequent breaks where possible, offer flexible working hours, amending shift patterns, carry out necessary improvements to the working environment (lighting, computer screens, work station), and make sure there is easy access to drinking water for all employees.

As well as being flexible with working hours, employers should also consider being flexible with regards to sickness policies to prevent migraine sufferer’s absence (which is highly likely to be only short term) resulting in strict/unfair punishments being handed out to them. Remember that the aforementioned changes do not cost much to introduce, and often have benefits to the wider team. A happier working environment will inevitably lead to increased productivity, and a happy employer!
For anybody still worried about the impact of migraine on their working life or indeed any day-to-day activities, Medical Specialists® offer a fantastic range of migraine prevention and migraine relief treatment which, for UK patients, can be obtained within 24 hours following an online consultation with one of Medical Specialists’® GMC-registered doctors.

People on higher salaries more likely to suffer hair loss

Working your way up through the ranks at your place of work could be great for your bank balance and enable you to splurge on luxury items, however it may prove disastrous for your hair.

Although hair loss is something that many attribute to old age, the hectic modern day working adult is susceptible to losing their hair, with men and women in their 20s losing hair. Almost half (45%) of men aged 16-24 and 47% of men aged 25-34 that were involved in a new survey, say their hair is already showing signs of thinning.

A L’Oreal Professionnel poll of 2,000 adults found that those with a salary of £75,000 or over were more likely to report they were suffering with hair loss because of the stress and demands of their jobs, in comparison to those on around £15,000.

In fact, only last year MP Nadine Dorries, who earns nearly £70,000 a year, spoke in a television interview about her hair loss. She described the massive impact to her confidence after waking up in tears each morning upon realising her hair had started to fall out.

The L’Oreal survey discovered that almost three quarters of women blame stress for hair loss and one in three were adamant they had noticed their hair was thinning.

Meanwhile, men typically put down genetics as the main reason for losing hair, but nonetheless half of men think that pressure at work is still partly to blame for hair loss.

However, across both sexes, the higher earners were far more likely to attribute their hair loss to work pressure compared to those on a smaller salary.

The survey found across the board that one in five men and women on a salary of over £75,000 per year were blaming work for their hair loss as opposed to just one in ten of those with a salary of up to £15,000.

Almost a third of UK women (30%) and around two-thirds of men (66%) suffer thinning hair or baldness, according to the research.

Despite the fact hair loss is very common – approximately 80% of men experience some sort of hair loss at some time in their life – it seems two in five men would prefer to suffer alone in silence than seek help and one in ten women are doing the same.

There is no reason to suffer alone though, millions of people in Britain alone are battling hair loss and Medical Specialists® Pharmacy are here to help. With our extensive range of hair loss treatments for men and women, you can act now to halt the progression of hair loss, and even possibly see regrowth of hair.

Medical Specialists® can provide the prescription-only medication Propecia (finasteride), which is used to treat male pattern baldness and works by blocking the conversion of testosterone to DHT, which thought to cause hair loss.  It is obtainable following a quick and easy 4-step process, which includes an online consultation with one of the Medical Specialists’® in-house doctors. Propecia is priced from as little as £47.58 per month.

Other options that can be used in conjunction to Propecia include Regaine Foam or Regaine Lotion, as featured in numerous television adverts. Obtainable from Medical Specialists Pharmacy from as little as £49.95 and £59.95 respectively, Regaine products contain the active ingredient Minoxidil; clinically proven to help prevent further hereditary hair loss. Minoxidil works by increasing the blood supply to the hair follicles, helping to strengthen existing hair and stimulate secondary hair growth.

Women can also take minoxidil, contained within Regaine for Women, and have the option of the over-the-counter treatment Florisene® – strongly recommended as an addition to any female hair loss treatment. Florisene® is especially recommended for women who have reduced hair volume (compared with several years ago) or who have recently noticed hair shedding as seen by more hairs in the brush, comb or when shampooing.

Impotence drug Sildenafil still being rationed on the NHS

Nearly all of us undoubtedly love sex. Besides the obvious fact that sex is quite clearly fun, it can even have health benefits in the form of being a stress and tension buster, and regular sex can even help people to lose weight as it is a great form of exercise.

However, how would you like to be told how much sex you can actually engage in on a weekly or monthly basis? Instantly negating the exciting and spontaneous nature of sex, it could force couples to plan when to have sex if they are rationed to a specific number of times.

It sounds absurd, but this is what NHS bosses have been accused of doing – ‘rationing’ the amount of times men suffering with erectile dysfunction (ED) can have sex. It is no wonder then that Medical Specialists® Pharmacy continue to have many thousands of men with ED coming to us seeking treatment for the condition.

Apparently, doctors have been informed they should not be prescribing more than one single pill of ‘generic’ Viagra per week to each patient that comes to them regarding their impotence problems.
The ridiculously strict limit was passed on despite the fact a pack of four pills costs the NHS as little as £1.45, or 36p a tablet.

With Pfizer (Viagra’s manufacturer) losing its UK patent in 2013, it is now legal for certain drug companies to produce their own impotence treatments that also contain sildenafil – Viagra’s active ingredient.

As what happens with increased competition in any market, the price has drastically decreased with regards to sildenafil, prompting the Department of Health to scrap regulations on the prescribing of sildenafil, ergo allowing most men with ED to be eligible for sildenafil on the NHS.

Health bosses seem to have become worried by this though, in particularly the financial impact it could have.

One letter was recently sent to doctors in the West Midlands by managers at NHS Telford and Wrekin Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) calling for GPs to restrict their prescribing of sildenafil.

The letter stated: “In light of the pressure on NHS budgets, patients who are eligible for NHS treatment should be prescribed the lowest effective dose, with a maximum frequency of ONE tablet per week (i.e. FOUR per MONTH).”

Dr Martin Duerden, a GP based in North Wales who advises the Royal College of General Practitioners on prescribing, replied back: “Can we ration sex in this way? Prescriptions for sildenafil have no restrictions and each person should be assessed as individuals – some will need more, some less.”

Junk food diets could stop people craving healthier food

Scientists warn that a diet full of fatty junk food and sugary treats could actually work to destroy our urge to consume healthy food products.

An Australian study published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology with rats found that not only did the rats gain significant weight eating junk food, it seemed to kill any desire for them to eat healthier food. This could perhaps help to understand behavioural changes in people that regularly eat ‘bad’ foods and appear to exhibit low willpower, putting them at risk of overindulging and obesity.

The researchers believe that by consistently eating junk food, this has a big impact on the reward circuit areas of animals’ brains. One such part affected they say is the orbitofrontal cortex, an area associated with decision-making. The experts involved in the study say the findings may have implications for a human’s ability to limit eating certain foods due to the fact the reward circuitry is similar in every mammal.

Professor Margaret Morris, from the University of New South Wales, said: “The interesting thing about this finding is that if the same thing happens in humans, eating junk food may change our responses to signals associated with food rewards. It’s like you’ve just had ice cream for lunch, yet you still go and eat more when you hear the ice cream van come by.”

For two weeks the team involved in the study fed one group of rats healthy rat food, with a second group being access to unhealthy human foods such as pie, dumplings, cookies and cake.

All of the rats were given cherry and grape sugar water to drink. The rats eating junk food were consuming 150% more calories and their weight had increased by 10% after the fortnight.

Within one particular experiment, scientists managed to teach the rats certain sound cues to link to either drink. Interestingly, if the rats given healthy food had heard the sound cue for grape sugar water after already just drinking it, they would not drink any more of it. Meanwhile, the junk food-fed rats responded different to the sound cues.

Even if they had just drank a lot of the grape sugar water, the sound cue for said drink would still somehow make them drink more of it. The same pattern was found for cherry sugar water.
Therefore it would seem that junk food-fed rats responded to sound cues and were unable to comprehend they had just overindulged in something (in this case the flavoured sugar water).

Basically, their natural preference for novelty had vanished and no longer avoided sounds linked to an overfamiliar food or taste, happy to continue indulging on what they were already eating.

This was even apparent for a significant period of time after the rats went back to a healthier diet. In comparison, the healthy rats were found to actually stop responding to the food they had just consumed.

“We know a lot about food and nutrition and what we should be doing, and yet we’re getting fatter and fatter,” Morris says. “Our sort of diet appears to override an animal’s ability to know it’s just eaten something—they’re just eating indiscriminately, if you will.”

Dr Amy Reichelt, lead author of the paper, commented: “As the global obesity epidemic intensifies, advertisements may have a greater effect on people who are overweight and make snacks like chocolate bars harder to resist.”

Smokers shun the NHS for help quitting smoking

The number of people using the NHS for help in successfully quitting smoking has declined for the second consecutive year, according to a new report.

Statistics to emerge from the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) have been branded “disappointing” by anti-smoking campaigners, showing that more than 586,000 people set a quit date using the NHS Stop Smoking Services through 2013/14, in comparison to over 724,000 people in 2012/13 – representing a 19% drop.

It marks the first time a decline has occurred over successive years since 2001, when NHS Stop Smoking Services began being provided to England’s local authorities.

Anti-smoking charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) believe the drop is down to a “combination of the impact of changes in the health service, fewer mass marketing campaigns that specifically encourage people to visit services and the impact of electronic cigarettes”.

Around half (300,540) of those who had set a target quit date then managed to give up smoking, with the over 60s being able to boast having the largest number of successful quitters at 58%.

Unsurprisingly, people aged 18 or under were the demographic with the lowest percentage of people who had managed to quit smoking (39%).

Hazel Cheeseman, director of policy at ASH said: “We know an ever increasing number of people are using electronic cigarettes to help them quit. While services can’t prescribe people electronic cigarettes, they can give people who want to use them extra support which can make all the difference to a successful quit.”

Martin Dockrell, tobacco control programme lead at Public Health England, which monitors NHS Stop Smoking Services, commented how “local stop smoking services are effective as ever at helping smokers to quit, even if overall numbers using the services have declined. Smokers are four times more likely to succeed using these services.”

He further added: “Many factors could explain why overall numbers are down including the emerging popularity of e-cigarettes as a quitting aid. However, so far no e-cigarettes have been licensed as medicines, and their contents and quality varies greatly. There is no reason why someone wanting to quit using an e-cigarette shouldn’t also speak to a stop smoking service to receive additional support and advice to stand the best chance of quitting for good.”

Smoking is still the single biggest factor behind illness and early death in Britain, not only negatively impacting the person smoking, but those in the close vicinity around them through second-hand smoking. Quite simply, quitting smoking is the best thing you can do. It is never too late to stop, making a big difference to your health and even increase life expectancy.

Brits using cling film…instead of condoms?!

Medical Specialists® Pharmacy have heard of some truly ridiculous methods that couples are relying on in order to avoid an unwanted pregnancy – all of which do not work we might add.

For example, alarmingly, some people genuinely believe absurd things like having sex in certain positions (i.e. standing up) can prevent the woman falling pregnant, or that a female can’t get pregnant the first time she has sex, or that somehow if she jumps up and down after sex then she will not fall pregnant. All are complete myths.

And joining these on the shocking list of useless contraception ideas is the fact that it appears many couples in Britain are dabbling in their own do-it-yourself methods of contraception, using household items as makeshift condoms. Cling film, latex gloves and sandwich bags are some of the things being used as condoms, found a new study.

German pharmaceutical giant Bayer Healthcare carried out a survey of 1,500 British women aged 25-34, finding that despite endless government initiatives on sexual health, despite pharmacies like ourselves providing the pill, a morning after pill and a variety of condoms, numerous worrying myths still exist in regards to family planning.

In fact, a quarter of the women that participated in the study were fully aware of couples trying the aforementioned DIY methods, but there were other findings to cause alarm.

A tenth thought women can’t fall pregnant during a period, with 17% admitting to relying on the withdrawal method on occasions.

However, many health experts believe that even with ‘pulling out’, is it possible that pre-ejaculate may collect enough sperm still in the urethra from a previous ejaculation to result in a pregnancy. The pulling out method also relies on a huge deal of trust from the woman and self-control from the man, and the latter is risky if the man suffers with premature ejaculation. Moreover, let’s not forget that without using a condom and simply pulling out will still leave both parties at risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection like chlamydia, genital herpes, gonorrhoea, HIV, and more.

With so many women relying on this withdrawal method, it is no surprise to learn that 30% of the women in the study confessed to having to resort to taking a morning after pill.

It seems better communication on the part of GPs is required after only 58% of women said their doctor had explored all avenues of contraception with them.

Contraceptive pills such as Yasmin and Dianette were by far the most popular choices of contraception, with 48% choosing the pill as their regular contraception method. Meanwhile, nearly a third of those surveyed were not aware of the existence of a hormonal implant and 27% did not know there was a contraceptive injection available.