Development of non-surgical methods of long-term or permanent contraception remains a challenge. Towards this objective, we show that intramuscular injection of a replication-incompetent, recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) designed to express an antibody that binds gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), a master regulator of reproduction in vertebrates, results in long-term infertility i...

Last year, the UN Population Fund initiated a 5-year review of progress in attaining the goals of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). The review included a series of meetings, including a forum in The Hague involving 2000 people, and will culminate in a special session of the UN General Assembly that will endorse the Secretary-General's progress report. The...

Hormonal contraceptive pills containing 750 microgram levonorgestrel are the most commonly used postcoital contraceptive method because of their high efficacy and fewer side effects. Emergency contraceptive pills containing levonorgestrel present their effects by several mechanisms, including delayed tubal transport of the ovum. A delay of tubal transportation of an ovum is also one of the poss...

Professor James T. O’Reilly’s article Losing Deference in the FDA’s Second Century: Judicial Review, Politics, and a Diminished Legacy of Expertise is a sweeping critique of the decline of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which until recently was considered one of the world’s premier health and safety agencies.1 According to Professor O’Reilly, the FDA’s decline, resulting in what he con...

PURPOSE Although prior research has demonstrated that many adolescents engage in noncoital sexual behavior, extant peer-reviewed studies have not used nationally representative data or multivariate methods to examine these behaviors. We used data from Cycle 6 of National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to explore factors related to oral and anal sex among adolescents. METHODS Data come from 2,...

PURPOSE This study was performed in the context of a sexual health promotion project in a Nova Scotia community. Community members wanted information about adolescent females' knowledge and use of emergency contraception (EC). The study was done to meet this need. METHODS Female high school students aged 14 to 19 were administered a self-completion survey asking about their knowledge of EC, t...

This cross-sectional study was conducted among 753 students (10th and 12th graders) from the Douro Region (Northern Portugal) to identify the information that adolescents have about emergency contraception (postcoital contraception), as well as their attitudes. Data collection was performed using a three-part questionnaire, divided as follows: the 1st part consists of 10 questions regarding soc...

OBJECTIVE To assess strategies to improve safe-sex practices in sexually active female adolescents living with HIV, through linking reproductive health (RH) care with HIV care. METHODS A single arm, 48-week prospective study was conducted with 77 sexually active adolescents in five sites in Thailand. Guided RH education was carried out through video, brochures and individual counselling. Part...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the capacity of the postcoital test (PCT) to predict spontaneous pregnancy in a large cohort study of subfertile couples. DESIGN Prospective study. SETTING Department of reproductive medicine of 38 hospitals in the Netherlands. PATIENT(S) Between January 2002 and February 2004, we prospectively included consecutive subfertile couples who had not been evaluated previo...

CONTEXT Despite the commitment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to expand the family planning method mix and increase access to services, awareness of emergency contraception is low among women, and the method remains underused and poorly integrated in family planning programming. METHODS Data from 15 focus group discussions conducted in 2016 among women aged 15-35 were used to e...