There is currently no reproducible model of the painful and lithogenic disease, chronic pancreatitis. Its biphasic evolution, from acinar cell hyperplasia and hyperactivity toward effacement of enzyme as well as bicarbonate secretory parenchyma, would be rationalized if it was linked to induction of cytochrome P450 mono-oxygenases (CYP): the increased oxidant load from long-term CYP induction eventually erodes micronutrient antioxidant defenses to injure cells. This philosophy would also rationalize the reported hepatobiliary aberrations associated with the human disease, including increases in free radical oxidation products in bile. Accordingly pancreatic and biliary secretions were studied in Syrian golden hamsters that were reared for 6 mo on low or high (16 corn oil) fat diets that were supplemented with a prototype inducer of CYP2 (200 ppm phenobarbitone) or CYP1 (100 ppm β naphthoflavone) enzyme families, with or without a putative enzyme inhibitor (400 ppm cimetidine). The drugs did not alter the reduction in flowrate or bicarbonate concentration of pancreatic juice caused by the high fat diet alone, but, in contrast, evoked pancreatic protein hypersecretion in a number of animals. β naphthoflavone, but not phenobarbitone, augmented the output of biliary lipid peroxidation products irrespective of dietary fat content and cimetidine cotreatment with either inducer did the same. We conclude: (1) that drug modifiers of CYP magnify the deleterious pancreatobiliary effects of corn oil-enriched diets and draw them closer to those found in human chronic pancreatitis; (2) that these functional derangements are accompanied by pancreatic lipoatrophy; and (3) that long-term CYP induction does not, of its own, cause fibrosis or the ductal abnormalities that generally accompany loss of pancreatic acinar cells in the human disease and, also in contrast, the changes that are caused appear to be painles
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