Nobel Prize winner’s speech on new medicine

Press, 19 February 1983, Page 21

Nobel Prize winner’s speech on new medicine

PA Auckland Women may soon be able to terminate their pregnancies at home using prostaglandins, says last year’s Nobel Prize winner for medicine, Professor Sune Bergstrom. Professor Bergstrom, of Sweden, was the plenary speaker at an international conference on coils, fats, and waxes at Auckland University. He won the Nobel Prize for his work on prostaglandins, which he first isolated in 1957. Prostaglandins are chemical regulators found in every cell in the body. Professor Bergstrom said in his lecture that synthesised prostaglandins, or analogues, can be used by women in their own homes

for pregnancy interruption at any time after a missed period with practically no side effects. He said that if experiments to introduce prostaglandins to terminate pregnancies succeeded, it would be a great breakthrough, especially for Third World countries. Prostaglandins can also be used in normal births to help stop bleeding. They are related to leucotrienes, which are known to be one of the causes of asthma. Professor Bergstrom said, “Since we know the structure of prostaglandins, we are now in a good position to attack the leucotrienes.” Now that much of the basic work had been done on prostaglandins, there would be increasing development of

specific prostaglandins for a wide spectrum of medical disorders.

He said that the drugs might become very important in the gastric field. Indomethacin could protect the gastric lining from breakdown from alcohols.

Professor Bergstrom said prostaglandins were essentially blood flow regulators. They could be administered to old people with ulcers to help dilate blood vessels.

Another analogue was used in cattle to synchronise a herd’s reproductive cycle. This meant that a whole herd could be artificially inseminated at once and that the calves would arrive together.