ISSN: 2474-9214
Authors: Mbah CJ
Pheochromocytoma is a neuroendocrine tumour of the adrenal medulla and manifests itself by sustained or paroxysmal hypertension due to excessive production of catecholamine’s. The symptoms require medical diagnosis and because of hormones secreted such symptoms may include high blood pressure, headache, rapid heartbeat, and sweating. Biochemical tests to confirm elevated levels of metanephrine and normetanephrine (catecholamine metabolites), imaging studies (magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography, scintigraphy) are generally used to diagnose the disease and its metastases. The purpose of the study was to summarize therapeutic agents used to treat pheochromocytoma and provide some of the liquid chromatographic analytical methods utilized to determine the therapeutic agents in biological fluids. The methodology involved literature review covering the title of the study. It was carried out by utilizing library scientific journals; scientific online databases such as Drug Bank, Embase, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts, Medline, PubChem, PubMed, Science Direct, and Scopus. These databases provided the required information. Results obtained revealed that treatment of the disease involved surgical removal of the tumour (gold-standard treatment), radiotherapy and chemotherapy (catecholamine blockade). Several analytical methods namely chromatographic, electrochemical, spectroscopic methods have been described to measure these therapeutic agents used to treat pheochromocytoma in biological fluids. In conclusion, treatment of pheochromocytoma involves therapeutic agents such as alpha1 (α1) adrenoceptor antagonists, beta (β)-adrenoceptor antagonists, calcium channel blockers, and anti-neoplastic agents. Amongst the chromatographic methods, hyphenated liquid chromatographic methods are of the most interest to analytical scientists.
Keywords: Pheochromocytoma; Surgery; Therapeutic agents; Biological fluids; Chromatographic analytical methods
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