Condoms protect you against pregnancy, but they aren’t foolproof, especially against diseases…until now.
A new futuristic condom has been approved in the Australian market, reports the DailyMail U.K. The VivaGel condom looks like your standard everyday condom, but it has some additional components to it that will blow you away. Along with your usual barrier of protection, this condom also offers a lubricant that is made with .5% astodrimer sodium (vivagel). This substance has been scientifically proven to deactivate HIV, herpes and HPV with a 99.9% effective rate.
“When it comes into contact with those viruses in either semen or in vaginal secretions, it can inactive them,” says Jackie Fairley, chief executive officer of Starpharma, the pharmaceutical company that created VivaGel. She explains, “the risk of being exposed to these viruses is influenced by the number of virus particles you’re exposed to. If VivaGel deactivates up to 99.9 percent of those particles, that greatly reduces the risk of transmission.”
The VivaGel condom received approval from the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in Australia in last month (which is similar to receiving FDA approval in the U.S.). The product has also been approved in Japan, with plans for U.S. FDA approval in the near future.
Who would’t want this added protection from a condom, especially when it can protect you against STDs that usually spread from skin to skin contact? Well, there are some researchers who believe that this product may be one to be wary of.
HPV researcher Anna-Barbara Moscicki, M.D., a pediatrics professor at University of California, San Francisco, studied this product and its usage as a potential intravaginal cream. She found that most participants exhibited mild irritation and inflammation in their private areas. However, her study looked at a 3 percent concentration of the drug, while the new condom would contain just 0.5 percent. This could raise a few eyebrows, but like with anything else, there are always the potential side effects.
