Depressed? Paranoid? Psychotic? Mifepristone - better known as RU-486 or "the abortion pill" - may be just what the doctor orders. Research under way at Stanford shows it can dramatically help in the treatment of major psychotic depression, which causes delusions and hallucinations, and often ends in suicide.
The drug, which blocks one of the cortisol receptors in the brain, is in clinical trials with 400 psychiatric patients and could be approved by the FDA within two years. The makers see it as a much-needed alternative to electroshock therapy. "Electroshock is not something anyone would volunteer for if they had a less-noxious alternative," says Joe Belanoff, a psychiatrist at Stanford and CEO of Corcept Therapeutics, which develops drugs for severe depression.
But access to the pills could soon be restricted. Citing the 2003 death of a California teenager who took RU-486 to end a pregnancy, anti-abortionists in Congress are pushing for a federal ban. The bill, introduced in November, has 68 co-sponsors. Scientists are worried: Availability is already limited because the drug has only one US distributor.
Emily Mulheran is worried, too. The 33-year-old Web designer, who participated in early trials at Stanford, said mifepristone silenced the voices that had twice convinced her to try to kill herself. She has since been unable to get the drug and has resorted to electroshock therapy, which has caused so many memory problems she can't work. "The people who are trying to ban this don't realize how many people it can help," she says, then adds with a laugh, "it makes me crazy."
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