Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 8, 1990 TAG: 9003082017
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium
The study in the New England Journal of Medicine concludes the medicine is 96 percent effective in terminating early pregnancies. The pill, RU 486 or mifepristone, is sold only in France, where it has been available since 1988.
The study's results, which duplicate earlier findings, show that the pill works as well as vacuum aspiration, the most common form of abortion, when taken by women up to three weeks after they miss their menstrual period.
The study of 2,115 women was conducted by Dr. Louise Silvestre and others from Roussel-Uclaf, the French company that makes the abortion pill.
In France, the pill is used for about one-quarter of the 120,000 abortions performed yearly but is not available for home use. Women must take the medicine at a clinic or hospital and return two days later for an injection of a synthetic form of the hormone prostaglandin.
Dr. Sheldon Segal of the Rockefeller Foundation in New York noted in an accompanying editorial that Roussel-Uclaf had withheld distribution of the drug in other countries until its effectiveness and safety were reviewed in larger studies.
"The new findings reported in this issue of the journal provide reassurance on these issues and could presage the availability of the method in countries where comparable conditions of authorized clinical use prevail," he wrote.
No company has proposed selling the drug in the United States, Segal said, and obtaining federal approval can take several years once someone applies.
Most of the women studied had temporary abdominal pain after getting the shots, but there were few other side effects. Treatment failures consisted mostly of incomplete expulsion of the fetus. In those cases, the abortions were completed surgically.
Members of the National Right-to-Life Committee disagreed. Richard Glasow, education director of the group, contended the study "offers nothing to calm concerns about the possibility of long-term adverse side effects."
by CNB