Efficacy of pergolide for the management of equine pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction: A systematic review.

The research paper is a systematic review of how effective the dopamine agonist, pergolide, is in managing a neurodegenerative disease called pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction in horses.

Objective of Research

The primary objective of this research was to evaluate and analyze the existing literature on the effectiveness of pergolide in managing equine pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID), a common neurodegenerative disease in older horses. Specifically, the researchers aimed to discern whether pergolide helps improve the clinical symptoms or reduces the pituitary hormone (ACTH) concentration compared to no treatment or other unofficial treatments.

Methodology

• The research involved comprehensive searches of electronic databases in April, August, and October 2019, with an update in July 2020. Only English-language publications published before these dates were considered.
• Researchers independently screened, extracted data, and assessed the quality of the publications based on pre-established criteria.
• A fixed data collection form, a modified version of the critically appraised topic data collection form, was used for data extraction.
• Due to significant variations across studies, the researchers did not conduct a meta-analysis.

Results

• The researchers found 612 publications, from which 129 abstracts were screened. Ultimately, 28 publications met the criteria to be included in the review.
• The bulk of these studies were descriptive case series, cohort studies or non-randomised, uncontrolled field trials.
• Despite the variation across studies in terms of study populations, case selection, diagnostic methods, dosage of pergolide, follow-up duration, and outcome measures, a majority of these studies reported that pergolide provided noticeable clinical improvements in more than 75% of cases.
• However, the extent to which individual clinical symptoms improved varied widely among the studies.
• A decrease in plasma ACTH concentrations was observed in 44-74% of the cases. As for normalization of plasma ACTH concentrations to within reported reference intervals, this was achieved in 28-74% of the cases.