Wonder Pill

Pill to boost women's sex drive and help them lose weight

A DRUG that boosts female sex drive while helping women lose weight is being developed by one of Scotland's leading experts on human reproduction.

Professor Robert Millar has been working on a hormone that can be used to treat loss of libido, a problem that affects millions of women each year.

But Millar, director of the Human Reproductive Sciences Unit at the Medical Research Council, said the hormone has the added benefit of suppressing appetite.

Tests of the "wonder pill" on animals have proved successful, but Millar admits a version for humans could be as much as a decade away.

The scientist has spent 30 years researching

Type 2 gonadotropin-releasing hormone, which drives the reproductive system in animals and humans.

Millar said that when female musk shrews and marmoset monkeys were directly injected with doses of Type 2 GnRH, they displayed classic mating behaviour towards their male counterparts.

In musk shrews this was shown by "rump presentation and tail wagging", and in monkeys it included "tongue flicking and eyebrow raising".

However, in an unexpected short-term side-effect, the laboratory animals also ate significantly less food than usual. In some cases this was one-third less than their usual daily diet.

Millar expects that a similar rise in libido and lessening of appetite would be seen in women given the hormone. He will now work on reproducing it in the form of a pill.