Abortion pills taken with antibiotics cut infection rates
Reported July 09, 2009
New York, July 9: The already low infection rate linked with the pills used to induce abortion can be reduced to negligible levels, if such pills are consumed orally along with antibiotics, suggests the results of a large study.
Currently, such pills can be taken by three different methods. In addition to normal swallow, the drug can be taken through the vaginal route and for the third way, which is known as the ‘buccal method’, the pill is placed between the gums and the cheek and is allowed to liquefy.
Opt for the non vaginal route
The present study, conducted and paid for by Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the U.S., examined the records of 227,823 women opted for abortions between the January of 2005 and the June 2008.
The study found that the abortion pill, Mifeprex, was effective about 98.5 percent of the times. Furthermore, changes in how the drug was administered, reduced the risk of a grave infection from 1 in 1,000 cases to a mere 0.06 in 1,000 cases.
Mary Fjerstad, a nurse practitioner and the lead author of the study, said, Our data show there was a reduction in serious infections when we switched to a nonvaginal route of misoprostol administration.
But I dont want to come down on the side of saying that everybody everywhere should give antibiotics with every medical abortion. Providers should decide that, she cautioned.
Safe procedure can be made safer
The current procedure of abortions induced with the help of abortion pills, involve swallowing Mifeprex, which causes the embryo to detach from the uterine wall. Therafter, a second pill, Misoprostol, is given after 24 to 48 hours to cause contractions and shove the embryo out of the uterus [Also called the womb, the uterus is a hollow, pear-shaped organ located in a woman’s lower abdomen, between the bladder and the rectum, that sheds its lining each month during menstruation and in which a fertilized egg implants and grows into a fetus. ] .
Prior to 2005, the procedure involved putting the Misoprostol pill into the vagina where the medicine dissolved. Few infections linked to the procedure led to a change in practice.
“This is the first really huge documentation of how safe and effective medical abortion is,” said Dr. Beverly Winikoff, a professor of family health and population at Columbia University.
“We decided we needed to make a safe procedure even safer,” said Mary Fjerstad.
Source : The New England Journal of Medicine.