Current and Emerging Therapeutics for the Management of Endometriosis

Endometriosis is a chronic benign disease that affects women of reproductive age. Medical therapy is often the first line of management for women with endometriosis in order to ameliorate symptoms or to prevent post-surgical disease recurrence. Currently, there are several medical options for the management of patients with endometriosis. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are widely used in the treatment of chronic inflammatory conditions, being efficacious in relieving primary dysmenorrhea. Combined oral contraceptives (COCs) and progestins, available for multiple routes of administration, are effective first-line hormonal options. In fact, several randomized controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrated that they succeed in improving pain symptoms in the majority of patients, are well tolerated and not expensive. Second-line therapy is represented by gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists. Even if these drugs are efficacious in treating women not responding to COCs or progestins, they are not orally available and have a less favorable tolerability profile (needing an appropriate add-back therapy). The use of danazol is limited by the large availability of other better-tolerated hormonal drugs. Because few data are available on long-term efficacy and safety of aromatase inhibitors they should be administered only in women with symptoms refractory to other conventional therapies in a clinical research setting. Promising preliminary data have emerged from multicenter Phase III trials on elagolix, a new oral GnRH antagonist but non-inferiority RCT data are required to compare elagolix with first-line therapies for endometriosis.