Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T23:40:38.745Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Updating RU 486 Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Extract

RU 486 is a synthetic drug with antisteroid hormone properties, synthesized by the Roussel-Uclaf Company, Paris, France, which owns a world-wide patent for all uses.

I have summarized the story of RU 486's discovery, testing and use in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in Science? and in a book entitled The Abortion Pill, also published in French as Génération Pilule.

Based on antiprogesterone action, RU 486 was first approved in France for voluntary pregnancy interruption (VIP), within the framework of the abortion law, as a medical method to replace the instrumental technique in use when the law was passed in 1975. Registration of RU 486 was obtained in September 1988.

Type
Medical and Health Services Issues
Copyright
© 1992 American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Generic name Mifepristone, trade name in France and the U.K. Mifegyne.Google Scholar
“RU 486 as an Antiprogesterone Steroid: From Receptor to Contragestion and Beyond,” J.A.M.A., 262, (1989): 18081814; special article on the occasion of the Lasker Award for clinical research.Google Scholar
“Contragestion and Other Clinical Applications of RU 486, an Antiprogesterone at the Receptor,” Science, 245, (1989): 13511356.Google Scholar
Odile, Jacob, Paris, 1990, translated and adapted for an English-speaking readership: The Abortion Pill, New York (Simon & Schuster), 1991.Google Scholar
Progesterone is a steroid hormone indispensable for the beginning and the continuation of pregnancy.Google Scholar
Three containing each 200 mg of RU 486 and taken together.Google Scholar
Time of optimal antiprogesterone activity.Google Scholar
Prostaglandins are local hormones which are naturally involved in contractions of the uterus during delivery and abortion and physiologically help expulsion.Google Scholar
95 percent or more complete successes.Google Scholar
Dr.Bygdeman, M.Google Scholar
A PG-E2 derivative.Google Scholar
Aubény, E. and Baulieu, E.E., “Activité contragestive de l'association au RU 486 d'une prostaglandine active par voie orale”, CR Acadm. Sci. Paris, 312, (1991): 539545.Google Scholar
Norman, J.E., Thong, K.J., Baird, D.T., “Uterine Contractility and Induction of Abortion in Early Pregnancy by Misoprostol and Mifepristone”, 338 The Lancet 12331236 (1991).Google Scholar
It was proposed to decrease RU 486 dosage when associated with Sulprostone or Gemeprost; however these prostaglandins were given at probably larger than adequate doses, and the data presented so far are irrelevant to the use of Misoprostol.Google Scholar
Registration on July 1st, 1991.Google Scholar
Signed in 1982, and remaining valid.Google Scholar
Frankfurt.Google Scholar
Cook, Rebecca, International Protection of Women's Reproductive Rights 24, New York University, 401483 (1992).Google ScholarPubMed
There is no predictable fetal abnormality, but there is no reason to take an additional risk.Google Scholar
Registration just obtained in France.Google Scholar
Objective: A baby in better health.Google Scholar
With Cushing syndromes, meningiomas.Google Scholar
Radestad, A., Christensen, N. J., Stromberg, L., “Induced Cervical Ripening with Mifepristone in First Trimester Pregancy”, Contraception 38 (1988); Bygdeman, M., Swahn, M.L., Johannisson, E., et al., “The Effect of RU 486 Administered During the Proliferative and Secretory Phase of the Bleeding Pattern, Hormonal Parameters and the Endometrium, ” Human Reproduction 3 (1988): 915–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See supra note 2.Google Scholar
We should be free to have different opinions about this, just as we do about the future of a human being after death.Google Scholar