Scientia Pharmaceutica Review Vaginal Administration of Contraceptives Esmat Jalalvandi 1,*, Hafez Jafari 2 , Christiani A. Amorim 3 , Denise Freitas Siqueira Petri 4 , Lei Nie 5,* and Amin Shavandi 2,* 1 School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK 2 BioMatter Unit, École Polytechnique de Bruxelles, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue F.D. Roosevelt, 50-CP 165/61, 1050 Brussels, Belgium;
[email protected] 3 Pôle de Recherche en Gynécologie, Institut de Recherche Expérimentale et Clinique, Université Catholique de Louvain, 1200 Brussels, Belgium;
[email protected] 4 Fundamental Chemistry Department, Institute of Chemistry, University of São Paulo, Av. Prof. Lineu Prestes 748, São Paulo 05508-000, Brazil;
[email protected] 5 College of Life Sciences, Xinyang Normal University, Xinyang 464000, China * Correspondence:
[email protected] (E.J.);
[email protected] (L.N.);
[email protected] (A.S.); Tel.: +32-2-650-3681 (A.S.) Abstract: While contraceptive drugs have enabled many people to decide when they want to have a baby, more than 100 million unintended pregnancies each year in the world may indicate the contraceptive requirement of many people has not been well addressed yet. The vagina is a well- established and practical route for the delivery of various pharmacological molecules, including contraceptives. This review aims to present an overview of different contraceptive methods focusing on the vaginal route of delivery for contraceptives, including current developments, discussing the potentials and limitations of the modern methods, designs, and how well each method performs for delivering the contraceptives and preventing pregnancy.