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Updating RU 486 Development

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Etienne-Emile Baulieu
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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
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Fall 1992 , pp. 154 - 156
Copyright
© 1992 American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics

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References

Generic name Mifepristone, trade name in France and the U.K. Mifegyne.Google Scholar
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“Contragestion and Other Clinical Applications of RU 486, an Antiprogesterone at the Receptor,” Science, 245, (1989): 1351–1356.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
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A PG-E2 derivative.Google Scholar
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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
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Signed in 1982, and remaining valid.Google Scholar
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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
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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