Women's satisfaction with medical abortion with RU486.

The combination of RU486 (mifepristone) and prostaglandin analogues has been used for medical abortion in several European centres. We surveyed 41 Australian women who successfully used this method of abortion in a World Health Organization-sponsored trial. Overall, the women were satisfied with the method and found the associated pain level acceptable.

PIP: A World Health Organization-sponsored study evaluated the efficacy and side effects of 2 doses of mifepristone (600 or 200 mg) followed by 400 mcg of misoprostol 48 hours later for the termination of early pregnancy in an international multicenter, randomized controlled trial. Reported are the partial results for 38 women from Monash University and Family Planning Victoria (Australia) enrolled in the trial's experimental group. Women were asked to rate their degree of satisfaction with the medical abortion on a scale of 1 (completely dissatisfied) to 5 (completely satisfied); the mean score was 4.5 (range, 1-5). The 15 women who had previously had a surgical abortion found the medical approach more acceptable (mean score, 4.5; range, 3-5). 34 participants (89.5%) rated the level of pain and discomfort associated with their medical abortion as acceptable. The main perceived advantages of medical abortion were its naturalness and non-invasiveness and the avoidance of anesthesia.

Can 3H-uridine-induced sister chromatid exchange be used as a measure of transcriptional activity of chromosomes?

In order to test the validity of using 3H-uridine-induced chromosome damage as a measure of the transcriptional activity of chromosomes, experiments were performed to examine the mechanism by which 3H-uridine induces sister chromatid exchanges. DON and B14FAF28 Chinese hamster cells exposed to 3H-uridine showed a dose-dependent increase in SCE frequency, whereas unlabelled uridine produced no increase. 3H-uridine labelling in the presence of increasing concentrations of unlabelled uridine eliminated this increase in a concentration dependent manner. Competition between 3H-uridine and other unlabelled pyrimidines (thymidine and cytidine) was equally as effective; however, unlabelled hypoxanthine had no effect on 3H-uridine-induced SCEs. This suggested that 3H-uridine caused SCEs after interconversion into deoxycytidine followed by incorporation into DNA. Significant incorporation of 3H into DNA was confirmed by direct comparisons of label in the DNA and RNA fractions, and about 90% of this label was found to be in the cytosine fraction of hydrolysates. We therefore conclude that 3H-uridine produces chromosome damage because of the incorporation of a tritiated conversion product into DNA, rather than by exposure of transcriptionally active DNA to 3H-uridine-labelled RNA. We suggest therefore, that the results of earlier experiments, in which 3H-uridine chromosome damage has been used to assay the transcriptional activity of chromosomes, may need to be reinterpreted.