CONTEXT Some authors have found beneficial effect of statins in certain inflammatory conditions, but the effect of statins on acute pancreatitis is not yet defined. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of simvastatin on an experimental model of mild and severe acute pancreatitis. ANIMALS One hundred and one Wistar rats with cerulein or taurocholate-induced acute pancre...

Factors determining severity of acute pancreatitis (AP) are poorly understood. Oxidative stress causes acinar cell injury and contributes to the severity, whereas prophylactic probiotics ameliorate experimental pancreatitis. Our objective was to study how probiotics affect oxidative stress, inflammation, and acinar cell injury during the early phase of AP. Fifty-three male Sprague-Dawley rats w...

Severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) still remains a clinical challenge, not only for its high mortality but the uncontrolled inflammatory progression from acute pancreatitis (AP) to SAP. Cell death, including apoptosis and necrosis are critical pathology of AP, since the severity of pancreatitis correlates directly with necrosis and inversely with apoptosis Therefore, regulation of cell death from ...

Understanding the regulation of death pathways, necrosis and apoptosis, in pancreatitis is important for developing therapies directed to the molecular pathogenesis of the disease. Protein kinase Cε (PKCε) has been previously shown to regulate inflammatory responses and zymogen activation in pancreatitis. Furthermore, we demonstrated that ethanol specifically activated PKCε in pancreatic acinar...

Pancreatic fibrosis, a prominent histopathological feature of chronic pancreatitis (CP) and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, is essentially a dynamic process that leads to irreversible scarring of parenchymal tissues of the pancreas. Though the exact mechanisms of its initiation and development are poorly understood, recent studies suggested that the activation of pancreatic stellate cells (PS...