Supercondom will also enhance sexual pleasure.
AB Wire
An Indian American researcher at Texas A&M University, Mahua Choudhury, had developed a ‘supercondom’ to combat the spread of AIDS in Africa, while enhancing the sexual experience.
Choudhury’s ‘supercondom’ — an idea that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation consider promising enough and realistic enough to fund out of a highly competitive grant program – it will keep HIV, and quite possibly other sexually transmitted diseases, from being transmitted, even if the condom breaks, reported the Austin American-Statesman.
The antioxidant that makes the condom work that way also enhances the sexual experience — a property Choudhury hopes will help to encourage the condom’s use and counteract the stigma this kind of contraception carries in much of the developing world.
Choudhury said the research is far along, but her lab at A&M’s Rangel College of Pharmacy still is doing testing, with clinical trials then needed before it could be commercially available. That is a years-long proposition.
Choudhury’s condom, similar to a proposed hydrogel condom being investigated at Australia’s University of Wollongong, would be made of the soft, squishy material best known as the substance from which soft contact lenses are often made, as well as some beauty products. The hydrogel Choudhury is working with is both stretchy and tough, said the report.
The Gates Foundation solicited proposals in 2013 for such new types of condoms because “material science and our understanding of neurobiology has undergone revolutionary transformation in the last decade,” while the condom has remained basically unchanged for the last half-century.
About 37 million people worldwide have HIV or AIDS, a disease that targets the immune system and has claimed 34 million lives, according to WHO estimates.
“We are hoping, for example, that when a man solicits a prostitute, that he will be more likely to wear this because of its properties,” Choudhury told the American-Statesman.
More importantly, quercetin prevents HIV from replicating. Should the condom break, quercetin would be released and “preserve the barrier,” Choudhury said. A main remaining question for researchers is how quickly the antioxidant must be released to be effective.
Choudhury’s proposal was among 54 selected out of more than 1,700 applicants around the world who responded to the Gates Foundation’s request. It is the second foundation grant she has received, after a 2011 award for research into preeclampsia, a pregnancy complication marked by high blood pressure.