The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 271 No 7262 p198
16 August 2003

This article
Reprint
Photocopy

News summary

Related websites
Committee on Safety of Medicines summary minutes (PDF 200K)

Levonorgestrel to change to stat dose

Levonelle (levonorgestrel) is expected to become simpler to use for emergency contraception next year.

Schering Health Care, which markets Levonelle in the United Kingdom, has applied to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to change the instructions for using the product from two 750mg doses of levonorgestrel 12 hours apart, to a single dose of 1.5mg levo-norgestrel.

The application was considered by the Committee on Safety of Medicines in June. A Schering spokeswoman said that it is not known when the change would be licensed, but the company expects to launch the new dose by 2005.

A World Health Organization research group showed at the end of last year that a single dose of levonorgestrel was just as effective as two successive doses (PJ, 14 December 2002, p838).

  * PDF files on PJ Online require Acrobat Reader 4 or later