Two safe and effective medication abortion regimens are recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO): misoprostol-only, and misoprostol in combination with mifepristone (“the combined regimen”). In the United States, however, mifepristone access is curtailed by a REMS and further threatened by a barrage of legal and regulatory attacks in recent years. These threats to mifepristone access have sharpened the focus on the need for alternative regimens. One readily available intervention is expanding the use and availability of the misoprostol-only regimen for medication abortion which presents important opportunities to expand access to care.
The MORE Study—led by Ibis researchers, Heidi Moseson and Ruvani Jayaweera, and Lori M. Gawron, MD, MPH, FACOG at the University of Utah—is a randomized clinical trial in the United States that aims to compare abortion completion and side-effects between an updated single drug regimen (3-4 doses of 800ug misoprostol every three hours) for medication abortion as compared to the standard combined regimen (mifepristone followed by misoprostol).
The MORE Study will, for the first time, measure experiences and outcomes following use of the misoprostol-only and combined regimen in the same study, allowing for greater clarity and nuance in understanding what to expect from each and contributing rigorous evidence that providers need to confidently prescribe and counsel patients on both medication abortion regimen options.
The study has several aims: (1) quantify precise estimates of abortion completion following use of a misoprostol-only medication abortion regimen within specific gestational ranges and models of care; (2) measure differences in the physical experience of medication abortion between the misoprostol-only and combined regimens; and (3) characterize the quality of medication abortion experiences to identify areas for improvement of counseling and support.
This study builds off of Ibis’s portfolio of research expanding the evidence for misoprostol-only medication abortion.
For study updates, contact the team at morestudy[at]ibispreproductivehealth.org