The challenge of overactive bladder therapy: alternative to antimuscarinic agents

Contemporary, the management of overactive bladder (OAB), a medical condition characterized by urgency, with or without urge urinary incontinence, frequency and nocturia, in absence of genitourinary pathologies or metabolic factors that could explain these symptoms, is complex, and a wide range of conservative treatments has been offered, including bladder training, biofeedback, behavioral changes, oral or intravesical anticholinergic agents, S3 sacral neuromodulation and peripheral electrical stimulation. Clinical efficacy of these treatments remains an open issue and several experimental and clinical studies were carried out in the last years improving the results of medical treatment. Here we review the pathophysiology of micturition reflex, the current therapies for OAB and the rationale for alternative treatments. Furthermore we critically address the potential use of medications targeting the central nervous system (CNS) and the primary sensory nerves of the bladder wall, we review the use of agonists of nociceptin/orphanin protein (NOP) receptor and finally we report the results obtained by intradetrusor injection of botulinum toxin.