Abstract

UNRIPE PAPAYA CONSUMPTION MAY AFFECT REPRODUCTIVE EFFICIENCY: DIFFERENT PARTS OF RAW PAPAYA CAN HAVE CONTRACEPTIVE AS WELL AS ABORTIFACIENT EFFECTS

Nilanjana Bhattacharyya Nath*

ABSTRACT

Healthy and nutritious food for a pregnant woman is very important. But there are several foods that can harm the fetus and one such fruit is papaya. Ripe papaya blend or juice has no negative effect on pregnancy. Various surveys showed that, in different parts of India and also in several countries, both illiterate and literate women avoided papaya during pregnancy. Different researchers showed that crude papaya latex or latex extract induced contraction in pregnant or non-pregnant rat uterus in vitro and unripe papaya can even induce abortion in rat in vivo. Unripe papaya has a component called latex which contains vegetable pepsin or ‘papain’. The ‘papain’ acts like prostaglandins and oxytocin which induces contractions which can often lead to miscarriage or early labor. In the other hand, Papaya seed is one of the male contraceptive agents which has the potential to be developed as male contraception. Papaya seeds contain the alkaloid compounds which have estrogenic reaction that affects a decrease inthe hormone testosterone. Testosterone with FSH stimulate spermatogenesis. With the disruption of spermatogenesis, sperm quality and the spermatozoa motility are also decreased.

Keywords: Unripe papaya, Papaya seeds, Papain, Miscarriage, Uterine contraction, Testosterone, Contraception.