Controversial Drug Helps Depression [RU-486 Abortion Pill]

HealthScout ^ | May 12, 2003 | Ivanhoe Newswire

[LurkedLongEnough]

PALO ALTO (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Fifteen percent of the 18 million people living with depression experience symptoms such as paranoia and hallucinations. This type of depression, called psychotic depression, is hard to treat with standard medication. Now a controversial treatment is changing the lives of people with this illness.

Just a few months ago, this scene was unthinkable for Isabel Camarillo. "I didn't want to live at all. I was always thinking of how to kill myself," she tells Ivanhoe.

Camarillo started hearing voices as a teenager. "It was like they were controlling my life," she says. They didn't go away.

Just a few months ago, at age 22, Camarillo tried to kill herself. She has psychotic depression. An illness Stanford University psychopharmacologist Alan Schatzberg, M.D., says is hard to treat and even harder to live with.

"They have misperceptions about reality. They will have odd beliefs, such beliefs as, 'I am dying, I am sick, I have lost everything,'" Dr. Schatzberg tells Ivanhoe.

Shock therapy has been the only real help for psychotic depression, but the stigma and side effects make it hard for patients to accept. Now, the controversial abortion drug RU-486 is making an impact. The hormone cortisol is found in high levels in patients with psychotic depression. By blocking that hormone, RU-486 resets an area of the brain that is not working.

Dr. Schatzberg says, "You might be able to avoid the use of shock treatments for lots of patients and treat them with a pill."

Two-thirds of patients on the drug have significant improvement after just one week.

"It changed me completely. No matter if you think you're never going to be okay, there's always a way. I think I found my way already," says Camarillo.

Dr. Schatzberg says just one week of treatment with RU-486 had benefits that lasted for weeks in the patients who received it. Current studies are underway to determine how long the benefits last. The FDA has put the drug on fast-track approval as a treatment for psychotic depression.

[LurkedLongEnough]

Did some searches and didn't see this posted. Even though the publication date was in May, this appeared in my email today via Biospace.

[Guillermo]

A pill that causes depression (and death) is the same one that can end depression. How convenient.

[Al B.]

Here we go.

[cgk]

RU-486 resets an area of the brain that is not working.

They must mean the part of the brain that makes people think HAPPY thoughts about killing babies.

[CobaltBlue]

RU-486 - mifepristone - works by blocking glucocorticoids, which are essential for life, but harmful in excess.

It's not unusual for a useful drug to be harmful to fetal growth. I have rheumatoid arthritis, and take two drugs which are likely to cause fetal deformity, if not death, methotrexate and Arava.

Researchers are now using thalidomide to treat cancer.

[cgk]

Three days after being sworn into office in 1993, President Clinton signed an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services and the FDA to take steps to promote the testing, licensing, and manufacturing of the drug (RU-486) in the United States. The National Right to Life Committee points out that in the course of carrying out the president’s directive, the FDA:

• actively pressured French manufacturer Roussel-Uclaf to submit a marketing application;
• helped negotiate the transfer of manufacturing and marketing rights from Roussel-Uclaf to the Population Council of New York once it became clear Roussel-Uclaf would not submit an application of its own;
• allowed the Population Council to use data from foreign studies in its marketing application, rather than require the Council to wait until it was ready to submit data from American studies;
• allowed the Population Council to submit its marketing application despite not having a finalized deal with any manufacturer or having any finished chemical product from its would-be manufacturer. The FDA allowed the Population Council to use chemical and manufacturing data from Roussel-Uclaf as the basis of the Council’s application, knowing that Roussel-Uclaf would not be the manufacturer;
• submitted the application to an advisory panel stacked with known abortion activists and RU-486 supporters; and
• processed the application for RU-486 in just six months, while potentially life-saving drugs were taking as long as 17 months to be processed.

Clinton's Legacy Recorded. Unleashing the Killer Pill, (article linked also details background of Hoescht/Farben's links to Hitler, including manufacure of cyanide gas "Zyklon-B".)

The RU-486 Files

[joesnuffy]

Executive Orders
Stroke of the Pen....Law of the Land..
Heady stuff
Did Pres Bush recind all those bad EOs of the clintoids?

[cgk]

Definition: RU-486 is the name commonly used for an artificial steroid that blocks progesterone, a hormone needed to continue a pregnancy.2 Other names for RU-486: Mifepristone is the generic name for RU-486. In the U.S., RU-486 is sold under the brand names Mifeprex® and Early Option®. Note: An RU-486 abortion involves two drugs When taken alone, RU-486 causes a complete abortion only about 60% of the time.3 A second drug, a prostaglandin, is given 48 hours later to increase its effectiveness. The prostaglandin causes uterine contractions to help expel the embryo. Misoprostol (brand name Cytotec) is the prostaglandin used with RU-486 in the U.S.

Important Notice: The manufacturer of Cytotec (misoprostol) has warned doctors that it recommends this drug not be used for abortion. [Manufacturer's warning].

[cgk]

No he didn't, but he's certainly being accused of doing so (enviromental laws and such).

[cgk]

ping.

[Under the Radar]

Interesting. Thanks for the post.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the heads up!

[ChemistCat]

If someone cannot get pregnant, this drug can't kill a baby, right?

Sheesh.

Men and infertile women could take this without doing any harm to themselves--and save their lives. It just needs to be controlled, just as thalidomide is, so that pregnant women do not inadvertantly get a prescription.

[CobaltBlue]

Reading the research on PubMed, I see that methotrexate is also being tested for early stage abortions. Once this gets out, there will be an outcry to ban methotrexate.

Maybe they should try to ban coat hangers while they're at it.

[CobaltBlue]

Mifepristone is also being used to treat refractory Cushing's Syndrome.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11502780&dopt=Abstract

Anyway, it's got me off on a fascinating tangent exploring the possibility that depression is an auto-immune disease. Many people who have rheumatoid arthritis and lupus also have depression - I thought it was caused by pain and lack of activity, but maybe there's more to it, like macrophages attacking parts of the brain, or the inflammatory cytokines secreted when the macrophages attack the body.

[ChemistCat]

Yeah, and men who buy boats for their very pregnant wives right before Christmas.

[najida]

There is no doubt in my mind that depression and psychosis can have biological triggers....

In my family, it is clearly genetics ;)

[ChemistCat]

Nearly all medications can be misused, and can cause harm even when used correctly. That's true of aspirin. It's true of many illegal drugs, for that matter, that could be doing good for sick people. Chemicals don't have morals!

[najida]

Thalidomide is now being prescribed in older populations for depression (I believe)... I know my jaw dropped the first time I saw it on a med list.

[najida]

I know of a case of MR that was believed to be caused by a mother who took too many aspirins (like 36 or so) every day during her pregnancy.

And ya wanna know the biggest? Alcohol when it comes to fetal harm.