Seven patients with growth hormone (GH)-secreting pituitary adenoma were treated preoperatively with octreotide (Sandostatin or SMS 201-995; a somatostatin analogue), and were compared with 18 non-treated patients in their clinical courses and adenoma analyses. Octreotide treatment improved the endocrinological data in all 7 cases. The octreotide-treated adenomas were soft and easily removed by suction and curettage. The postoperative normalization of endocrinological data was encountered more often in the octreotide-treated cases than in the non-treated, although the statistical significance was not observed by the limited number of cases. The adenoma tissues were examined with conventional histology and immunohistochemistry, and the amount of GH messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) was quantitatively assessed. The studies demonstrated: 1) No fibrosis nor necrosis was observed in the adenomas from the octreotide-treated patients. 2) Immunohistochemistry for human GH revealed no remarkable differences between the octreotide-treated and the non-treated adenomas. 3) The amounts of GH mRNA in the adenoma from the octreotide-treated patients were 4.2±1.8 (mean± SEM; expressed in an arbitrary unit) and were significantly less than those from the non-treated (33.6± 9.1). These data suggest that octreotide inhibits not only GH release from the adenoma but also its biosynthesis.