Review
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Obstet Gynecol. May 10, 2015; 4(2): 24-39
Published online May 10, 2015. doi: 10.5317/wjog.v4.i2.24
Pioneering drugs for overactive bladder and detrusor overactivity: Ongoing research and future directions
Emilio Sacco, Salvatore Recupero, Riccardo Bientinesi, Giuseppe Palermo, Daniele D’Agostino, Diego Currò, Pierfrancesco Bassi
Emilio Sacco, Salvatore Recupero, Riccardo Bientinesi, Giuseppe Palermo, Daniele D’Agostino, Pierfrancesco Bassi, Urologic Clinic, Department of Surgical Sciences, “Agostino Gemelli” Hospital, Catholic University Medical School, 00168 Rome, Italy
Diego Currò, Institute of Pharmacology, Catholic University Medical School, 00168 Rome, Italy
Author contributions: Sacco E, Recupero S and Bientinesi R performed the search of articles; Sacco E, Recupero S, Bientinesi R, Palermo G and D’Agostino D performed the revision and selection of the retrieved articles and wrote the paper; Currò D and Bassi P performed a final supervision of the paper and contributed equally to the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest: All authors have no conflict of interest related to the manuscript.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Emilio Sacco, MD, PhD, Urologic Clinic, Department of Surgical Sciences, “Agostino Gemelli” Hospital, Catholic University Medical School, Largo Vito 1, 00168 Roma, Italy. emilio.sacco@gmail.com
Telephone: +39-6-30155290 Fax: +39-6-30155975
Received: December 20, 2014
Peer-review started: December 21, 2014
First decision: January 20, 2015
Revised: January 31, 2015
Accepted: April 10, 2015
Article in press: April 14, 2015
Published online: May 10, 2015
Processing time: 130 Days and 12.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: The forefront of global research scenario of investigational drug candidates for the management of patients with overactive bladder and detrusor overactivity was reviewed. Among a huge amount of exploratory compounds with completely new mechanisms of action, some promising pharmacological principles show potential to translate into novel therapeutics to be clinically used as first-line alternative treatments, or in combination with established drugs, or as second-line treatments in refractory patients.