Liver, Pancreas, and Biliary TractDifferential expression of chemokines in normal pancreas and in chronic pancreatitis☆,☆☆
Section snippets
Patients
Tissue specimens for the assessment of chemokine expression were obtained from 23 patients with CP. In most cases, CP was caused by a long history of excessive alcohol consumption; in 5 patients, the cause of CP was unidentified. None of the patients experienced an acute attack of pancreatitis in the 4-week period preceding surgical treatment, and all patients were reported to be abstinent from excessive alcohol consumption during this period. The patients did not receive any medicamentous
Histopathologic evaluation
All tissue specimens analyzed from patients with CP showed the histopathologic characteristics of CP with a heterogeneous pattern of extended fibrotic areas in vicinity to areas with remaining pancreatic parenchyma. Mononuclear cell infiltrates were observed on most tissue sections. Granulocytes were also present in low numbers on some sections; however, no other signs of acute inflammation were found, except for very rare, small foci of fat necrosis on 3 of 23 tissue specimens. Control
Discussion
Inflammatory infiltrates are frequently observed in the pancreas of patients with CP. Because the recruitment and activation of infiltrating cells are known to greatly depend on the local production of inflammatory mediators in inflamed tissues (reviewed by Rollins12), we attempted to assess whether production of chemokines could possibly contribute to the inflammatory response observed in CP.
Considering the large number of chemokines already identified, we decided to restrict our analysis to 5
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Dr. Robert Hunger for advice on the isolation of pancreas-infiltrating cells, Dr. Thomas Brunner for helpful discussions and critical reading of the manuscript, Maria Hodel for the careful preparation of the manuscript, and Marianne Bärtschi and Eliane Blank for preparation of the paraffin sections.
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Supported by grants 31-43495.95 and 31-53961.98 from the Swiss National Science Foundation.
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Address requests for reprints to: Christoph Mueller, Ph.D., Division of Immunopathology, Department of Pathology, University of Bern, Murtenstrasse 31, CH-3010 Bern/Switzerland. e-mail: [email protected]; fax: (41) 31-381-8764.