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According to Planned Parenthood, men have five birth control options which includes abstinence, condoms, outercourse, vasectomy and withdrawal. 

In a groundbreaking study on mice, researchers have identified a small molecule compound that could temporarily hinder sperm production. 

"No one has ever had a drug that they've been able to test in mice that actually targets the germline, that is the spermatogenic cells, that has reversibility," Study researcher Martin Matzuk, a developmental biologist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said. 

Researchers said it is hard to develop a birth control pill for men because men produce continuous millions of daily sperm whereas in females, all you have to do is disrupt the monthly hormonal cycles that lead to the release of a single egg. 

The researchers tested the compound by injecting it into male mice that had access to female mice and found that it drastically decreased sperm counts. 

For six weeks, researchers gave the mice low daily doses and noted that male mice had only 11 percent as many sperm as mice without the injected compound, and only 5 percent of the sperm were capable of swimming. 

"This is a good reason to get excited about low sperm counts," Matzuk said. 

Most importantly, researchers found that once treatment of the injected compound was stopped, the mice were able to fully reproduce and the mice babies born after the treatment were perfectly healthy,

The study is published in the the journal Cell. 

It is widely believed that the lack of contraceptive alternatives for men is partially responsible for the high rate of unplanned pregnancies and despite the unsatisfactory options for male contraception, nearly one-third of couples rely on male-directed birth control methods.

It has been centuries since the introduction of the condom and since then, there has not been a new reversible contraceptive for men. 

"We envision that our discoveries can be completely translated to men, providing a novel and efficacious strategy for a male contraceptive," the researchers wrote, noting the high degree of conservation between human and mouse BRDT proteins.