Effectiveness of medical abortion with mifepristone and buccal misoprostol through 59 gestational days

BACKGROUND: From 2001 to March 2006, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (Planned Parenthood) health centers throughout the United States provided medical abortions principally by a regimen of oral mifepristone, followed 24-48 h later by vaginal misoprostol. In late March 2006, analyses of serious uterine infections following medical abortions led Planned Parenthood to change the route of misoprostol administration and to employ additional measures to minimize subsequent serious uterine infections. In August 2006, we conducted an extensive audit of medical abortions with the new buccal misoprostol regimen so that patients could be given accurate information about the success rate of the new regimen. OBJECTIVES: We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of the buccal medical abortion regimen and to examine correlates of its success during routine service delivery. METHODS: In 2006, audits were conducted in 10 large urban service points to estimate the success rates of the buccal regimen. Success was defined as medical abortion without vacuum aspiration. These audits also permitted estimates of success rates with oral misoprostol following mifepristone in a subset in which 98% of the subjects stemmed from two sites. RESULTS: The effectiveness of the buccal misoprostol-mifepristone regimen was 98.3% for women with gestational ages below 60 days. The oral misoprostol-mifepristone regimen, used by 278 women with a gestational age below 50 days, had a success rate of 96.8%. CONCLUSION: In conjunction with 200 mg of mifepristone, use of 800 mcg of buccal misoprostol up to 59 days of gestation is as effective as the use of 800 mcg of vaginal misoprostol up to 63 days of gestation.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3766037/?tool=pubme

Chronic in vivo nerve electrical recordings of Aplysia californica using a boron-doped polycrystalline diamond electrode

Abstract Custom diamond electrodes for in vivo, passive electrical nerve recording were developed and implanted in an intact, freely behaving Aplysia californica. A diamond electrode may have advantages for electrical recording because of its chemical stability, higher signal-to-noise ratio, and reduced biological fouling relative to traditional nerve-recording electrode materials. For example, thin stainless steel electrodes used for chronic extracellular recording in Aplysia typically last on the order of seven days in vivo. We have developed a first-generation diamond electrode with a flexible lead to withstand the complicated movements of Aplysia and to enable direct comparison with implanted stainless steel electrodes. Boron-doped polycrystalline diamond was grown onto tungsten wire substrates by hot filament chemical vapor deposition. The wires were pre-shaped into a hook (for nerve recording) or a loop (for a ground wire) and masked for selective growth on only 2–3 mm of the wire. After diamond growth, the uncoated portion of the wire substrates was removed and the intact diamond-coated hook or loop attached to a stainless steel electrical lead with conductive epoxy. After epoxy curing, these electrodes were insulated and implanted in the animal. The diamond and stainless steel electrodes were attached extracellularly to buccal nerve 2, a primary nerve for the feeding behavior of A.californica. The two electrodes were implanted adjacent to each other so that the recordings would be nearly synchronous. In vivo recordings were successfully obtained on a diamond hook electrode during a feeding behavior for up to 9 days after the implantation. The electrode remained intact for a total of 28 days in the animal and upon retrieval