Combined therapy of somatostatin analogues with pegvisomant for the treatment of acromegaly: a meta-analysis of prospective studies

BACKGROUND: Acromegaly is a rare, chronic and severe disease. Drug therapy including somatostatin analogues (SAs), dopamine receptor agonists and growth hormone receptor antagonists (pegvisomant, PEG) are commonly used to treat patients who do not respond to surgery. The use of combination therapy with PEG and SAs has become more common over the last decade. We performed this study to accurately evaluate the effect of combination therapy of SAs with PEG on acromegalic patients. METHODS: PubMed, EMBASE, The Cochrane Library, ClinicalTrials.gov, Scopus, Web of Science, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database and Trip database were searched for relevant studies. Prospective clinical trials treating acromegaly with the co-administration of SAs and PEG were included. We performed a meta-analysis by using Stata 12.1. Sensitivity analysis was conducted to explore heterogeneity. RESULTS: Nine studies were included in this meta-analysis. The overall rate of serum insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) normalization was 66% (95% CI: 52–78%; I(2) = 62.59%). The combination therapy did not significantly change patients’ fasting plasma glucose (ES: 0.011 mmol*L(− 1); 95% CI: − 0.374 to 0.397 mmol*L(− 1); P = 0.954) or glycosylated haemoglobin (ES: − 0.074%; 95% CI: − 0.166 to 0.315%; P = 0.544) while decreasing the fasting plasma insulin (ES: − 21.487 pmol*L(-1); 95% CI: − 35.713 to − 7.260 pmol*L(-1); P = 0.003). Elevation of liver enzyme levels was found in 14% (95% CI: 8 to 21%) of the patients. There was no significant difference for serious adverse events and treatment discontinuation due to adverse event between SAs monotherapy group and combination therapy group. CONCLUSIONS: Combined therapy of SAs and PEG effectively normalized IGF-1 levels in most of the patients whose IGF-1 level was greater than the upper limit of normal after high dose SAs monotherapy. The therapy also decreased significantly FPI levels with a neutral effect on glucose parameters in acromegaly patients. Moreover, elevated liver enzyme levels were observed in a small number of patients, which suggests a need for liver function monitoring. TRIAL REGISTRATION: We have our protocol registered in PROSPERO. (Registration number: CRD42019115549).