A Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Efficacy, Tolerability, and Safety of a Fixed Dose Combination of Spironolactone, Pioglitazone & Metformin (SPIOMET) in Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)

This is a multi-centre, multi-national, double-blinded, placebo-controlled, parallel, randomised Phase II clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy, tolerability, and safety of a fixed dose combination of Spironolactone, Pioglitazone and Metformin (SPIOMET) for adolescent girls and young adult women with polycystic ovary syndrome. Study description: Currently, there is no European Medicines Agency /U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved therapy for polycystic ovary syndrome in adolescent girls and young adult women. Oral contraceptives (OCs) are prescribed off-label to approximately 98% of AYAs with PCOS, including those without pregnancy risk. OCs alleviate key symptoms by inducing a pharmacological combination of anovulatory subfertility, regular pseudo-menses, and extreme elevations of sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG), but OCs do not revert the underlying pathophysiology, and patients remain at risk for post-treatment subfertility and possibly, for lifelong co-morbidities. Given the key role of hepato-visceral fat excess in the pathogenesis of PCOS, the prime aim of the treatment should be to achieve a preferential loss of central fat, which should in turn normalise the entire PCOS phenotype. Recent evidence disclosed that a treatment consisting of a fixed low-dose combination of two insulin sensitisers \[pioglitazone (PIO) and metformin (MET), with different modes of action\], and one mixed anti-androgen and anti-mineralocorticoid (spironolactone), was superior to an OC in normalising the PCOS phenotype, including ovulation rates and hepato-visceral fat. The study's main goals are to assess the efficacy, tolerability and safety of a new treatment (SPIOMET) for adolescent girls and young adult women with polycistic ovarian syndrome; the comparison (in this order) of each SPIOMET, spironolactone and pioglitazone (SPIO) and PIO over placebo; and in addition, the comparison of SPIOMET over PIO and over SPIO (in this order). Primary Objective: To test the efficacy of SPIOMET in normalising ovulation rate in adolescents and young adult women with PCOS. Secondary Objectives: To test the efficacy of SPIOMET in normalising the endocrine-metabolic status, to describe the drug safety profile and to assess the adherence and subjective acceptability, as well as the quality of life of the participating subjects.