It blocks a sex hormone

Jan 23, 2007 16:23 GMT  ·  By

When first found, aspirin was regarded as a panacea against headache.

But is aspirin that useful?

American experiments on lab rats found that aspirin changed sexual behavior of the offspring if ingested by the mother while pregnant.

The male hormone testosterone masculinize the male brain even before birth (so we are mentally born straight or gay).

But aspirin was discovered to block the synthesis of the chemical prostaglandin-E2, involved in triggering the generating of sex hormones.

It was already proven that male rats exposed during pregnancy or as newborns to drugs blocking of prostaglandin-E2 production were less sexually active as adults.

The brains of these rats looked very female in its structure.

The opposite also proved true: the female rats exposed in early stages of development to aspirin developed a male brain and sexual behavior.

If these effects are similar in humans, as many times happened with experiments made on rats, then mothers should avoid aspirin intake during the pregnancy if they do not want to affect the normal sexuality of their offspring.

Low dose aspirin is prescribed to pregnant women to prevent preeclampsia and indomethacin, a drug which also has an anti-prostaglandin-E2 activity is prescribed to premature babies with heart defects.

More recently, British researchers started checking whether such drugs affect the human sex behavior, monitoring about 12,000 born in 1991/1992.

The same team found that overexposure to testosterone of the female fetuses impacts their sexual behavior in later life.

These girls were more likely to possess a male behavior and be tomboys.

But the effect of the drugs blocking prostaglandin-E2 on human sexuality is not yet known.

"It is something we are investigating and we don't know yet," said Professor Melissa Hines and colleagues at City University, London.

"We know that in other instances results from rats do not always pan out in humans. So it gives us an idea of something to look at but we can't assume the effects will be the same in humans."