DUBBED THE "SLUT PILL" NEW CONTRACEPTIVE IS BEING DEVELOPED

PERICOITAL PILL

There's high interest among women for an "on-demand" contraceptive pill they could take only around the time of sex, studies have shown.
Researchers have been looking into the development of a "pericoital pill," an "on demand" women's contraceptive that would likely use the same ingredient as birth control pills now on the market.

A birth control pill you take only around the time you have sex?
The interest in such an "on demand" contraceptive for women is high, say researchers working in the field.
Five decades after the birth-control pill debuted in the United States, a so-called "pericoital pill" is among the alternative contraceptive choices scientists have been busy studying.
Currently, no oral birth control method is approved for use only when needed — that is, at the time of sex.
A study published last month in the journal Contraception looked at whether women at abortion and family-planning clinics might be interested in repeated use of a pericoital pill. A majority said they were.
"More work is needed to establish the effectiveness of a pericoital pill and determine how frequently a pericoital pill might be used by women who currently have unprotected intercourse," the study's authors concluded.

WHO WOULD BENEFIT?
Some publications have taken to giving such a pill less-than-flattering names. The birth-control support network site Bedsider.org referred to it as an "only when you get lucky" pill, while articles in New York Magazine and Slate used the term "slut pill."
Researchers say such characterizations are pejorative. They say a pericoital contraceptive pill would fill a very real need — and not necessarily for women who have a lot of sex.
"There is widespread agreement that the best candidate for a pericoital pill is a woman who has sex infrequently," said Diana Greene Foster, an associate professor at the University of California San Francisco's Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences and an author of the Contraception study. 
"Women who have frequent sex would do better to take the daily pill (lower dose of hormones and higher effectiveness) or use a long term method of birth control like the IUD or implant," she told MSN by email.

COST OF DEVELOPMENT
In 2011, Gynuity Health Projects, a research organization, was awarded a grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to look into the development of the first on-demand oral contraceptive. Gynuity said the new product is likely to contain the hormone levonorgestrel, the same active ingredient used in many birth-control pills currently on the market.
PATH, an international nonprofit organization that has been working with Gynuity and other partners to assess the product's demand, said studies from multiple countries have shown that some women are already using emergency contraceptive pills or other drugs before or after sex as their regular method of contraception.
Foster said a pharmaceutical company would have to get Food and Drug Administration approval for such a medication in the United States. 
"The hormones are the same that are in the daily oral contraceptive pills and emergency contraception. So the trials required by the FDA will certainly find it is safe.  However, such trials are expensive and I don’t know that any pharmaceutical company is interested," Foster told MSN News.