Mifepristone deaths raise unanswered questions.(Obstetrics)

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Recent deaths due to sepsis following medical abortion may be the result of an interaction between factors specific to mifepristone--one of the drugs used in the abortions--and Clostridium sordellii, the cause of infection in at least three of the five patients who died, James A. McGregor, M.D., said at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Five deaths linked with the use of mifepristone (Mifeprex) for medical abortion have been reported and prompted revisions to the product's package insert. The Food and Drug Administration and the drug's maker, Danco Laboratories LLC, announced the most recent change in July. The insert will now advise physicians to tell patients to seek care if they develop diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting with or without abdominal pain after using the drug.

The first of the five deaths that prompted the warnings occurred in Canada in 2001 during a clinical trial of mifepristone. That case and two others that occurred in California since 2003 were associated with C. sordellii infection. The cause of infection in the two other deaths, which also occurred in California, has not been identified, but all five patients died after using oral mifepristone followed by vaginal misoprostol, rather than the FDA-approved regimen, which consists of oral mifepristone followed by oral misoprostol.

In a poster presented at the meeting, Dr. McGregor of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, described case findings in the two California patients with confirmed C. sordellii infection and toxic shock-like syndrome.

Both were previously healthy, young (aged 18 and 22), primiparous women treated with the modified mifepristone/misoprostol medical abortion protocol, including 200-mg mifepristone orally followed by 8,000-mcg misoprostol inserted vaginally the next day. They reported to emergency departments within 6 days complaining of abdominal pain, nausea, and light-headedness or faintness. Both were afebrile, tachycardic, tachypneic, and hypotensive.

Laboratory findings demonstrated hemoconcentration and dramatic leukocytosis, and both patients ...