There’s news today that not only may certain antibiotics delay aging, but they may reduce risk of infection and death associated with the so-called "abortion pill."

The antibiotic rapamycin, which has been used to suppress the immune system of transplant patients and for treating some cancers, has been proven to extend the life of mice, reports The New York Times. The research associated with the National Institute of Aging was first reported by Nature. The thought is, if it can do it for mice, chances are it could do the same for people. The difference between rapamycin and other interventions that have caused mice to live longer is that rapamycin is effective on mice even beginning late in life — 600 days, or age 60 for a human. But scientists warn this does not mean anyone should try this at home quite yet.

Meanwhile, on the abortion front, research published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that taking the "abortion pill" — RU-486, or mifepristone, to stop the pregnancy, and misoprostol to help expel the fetus — orally with antibiotics, instead of vaginally, cuts the risk of serious infection and death by 93 percent. That would make the infection threat 1 in 16,000, instead of 1 in 1,000.

"Our goal was to make a safe procedure even safer," Mary Fjerstad, a lead author of the study who used to work for Planned Parenthood, told Reuters.

Planned Parenthood health centers in the U.S. provided the drug — mifepristone was taken orally, and misoprostol was taken vaginally two days later — since 2001, but after concerns of serious infections surfaced in 2006, they changed administration of the treatment, so that both the mifepristone and misoprostol were taken orally, along with antibiotics. Up until 2006, seven women died from serious infections after taking the pill, including an 18-year-old California woman whose father urged federal regulators to ban the drug, reports The San Francisco Chronicle. These nonsurgical medical abortions now make up nearly 25 percent of early-term abortions in the United States.