[Oxygen radicals and acute pancreatitis]

Abstract

Oxygen-derived free radicals mediate an important step in the initiation of experimental acute pancreatitis. Thereby these reactive oxygen metabolites are generated at an early stage of disease. The source of the enhanced production of oxygen radicals remains unclear. Experimentally, the efficiency of scavenger treatment varied between different models, whereby these differences were depending on the experimental model and not on the form of pancreatitis which was induced. Most studies pretreated the experimental animals before inducing acute pancreatitis. This does not mirror the clinical reality, since patients are admitted to the hospital after onset of the disease. It was shown in Cerulein-pancreatitis, however, that scavenger treatment also mitigated the pancreatic tissue damages after induction of acute pancreatitis. Moreover, antioxidant treatment also attenuated the extrapancreatic complications, thus improving the final outcome of the disease. The first indirect observations also suggest that in human acute recurrent and chronic pancreatitis oxygen free radicals are generated and add to the damages seen. Therefore, well-defined controlled clinical studies with patients suffering from acute pancreatitis are needed to validate the role of oxygen radicals in this disease.