The National Institutes of Health will spend $224,863 to test 95 “custom-fitted” condoms, the New York Post reported.
The study was spearheaded over condoms’ “disappointingly low” reported usage, the government said, adding that a third to half of men complain that their condoms don’t fit well, and they’re less likely to use them, the government noted.
The NIH points the finger at U.S. “regulatory guidelines” that keep choices in a “narrow range of condom sizes.”
$224,863 National Institutes of Health Study Aims to Break Through One Size Fits All Barrier...for Condoms
Image source: TheyFit website
It gets better, though.
While the grant was given to TheyFit of Covington, Ga., which offers a wide variety of condoms that vary in width and in length — from a bit more than 3 inches to nearly 9.5 inches — they’re unavailable in the United States.
The European Union countries have access to them, but it’s a no-go here because they haven’t been approved by the FDA.
“For most of their existence, condoms were custom fitted,” TheyFit explained on its Web site, according to the Post. “For hundreds of years, until the early part of the 20th century, they were made of linen or animal gut fitted to…individual penis sizes.” Then mass production of latex models gave way to a one-size-fits-all condom, TheyFit added.
TheyFit even offers a free downloadable “FitKit” to explore sizing on your own.
The project titled “Behavioral and Manufacturing Science to Commercially Develop Fitted Condoms” isn’t the first recipient of NIH money to condom research; it handed out $423,500 in 2009 for a study to learn why condom usage is so low in the United States.