Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:P61278 (somatostatin)
 22,083 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Acromegaly is a disabling disease that is associated with reduced life expectancy. Lowering growth hormone (GH) concentrations rapidly improves patient wellbeing. Recent data also indicate that GH concentrations < 2.5 micrograms l-1 are associated with improved mortality, providing a therapeutic goal in the majority of patients. In most cases, initial therapy should be surgical via the transsphenoidal route and conducted by an experienced operator. In such centres of excellence, approximately 60 out of every 100 acromegalic patients should be 'cured' (GH < 2.5 micrograms l-1) by surgery alone. Effective medical therapies have been introduced in the form of long-acting somatostatin analogues--octreotide and lanreotide--and depot preparations of these drugs result in lowering of GH to < 2.5 micrograms l-1 and normalization of IGF-I concentrations in 55-65% of cases. Preliminary results are also emerging on Pegvisomant, a genetically engineered GH receptor antagonist, which is clinically and biochemically very effective. It is likely that this drug will be licensed for use in patients with acromegaly in the near future. These effective medical therapies will undoubtedly raise the issue of their use as primary therapy for acromegaly but at present they should be used as an adjunct to surgery and/or radiotherapy.
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PMID:Current therapy for acromegaly. 1075 33

Acromegaly is a rare chronic and disabling disease with many comorbidities leading to a mortality rate three times higher than in the normal population, mainly due to cardiovascular diseases. Based on epidemiological evidence, the mortality rate is normalized to normal population values when treatment brings serum GH levels to <2.5 microg/l and IGF-1 levels to normal age/gender values. Many efficacious therapeutic approaches are currently available to acromegaly control, namely pituitary surgery, radiotherapy and medical therapy, which encompasses dopamine agonists (DA), somatostatin analogs (SA; currently considered the gold standard treatment) and the GH-receptor antagonist pegvisomant (PEG-V). The efficacy and indications of each therapy depend on the tumor size and invasiveness, patient's condition and the local availability of each treatment modality. Treatment with SA analogs controls about two thirds of acromegalics, with recent data highly suggesting that this result can be enhanced by the combination of SA with PEG-V, or with the DA cabergoline. Moreover, surgical tumor debulking, even noncurative, might overcome the resistance of GH-secreting adenomas to SA. Therefore, these strategies may optimize acromegaly control, and potentially reduce treatment costs.
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PMID:Optimizing acromegaly treatment. 2061 9