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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Only very heavy alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking appears to raise a person's risk for chronic pancreatitis, according to a new study.
Chronic pancreatitis -- an inflammatory syndrome of the pancreas characterized by progressive scarring of the organ, poor digestion, diabetes and pain -- has long been associated alcohol consumption and cigarette smoking, but new evidence indicates that a threshold of five or more drinks per day is required to significantly boost a person's risk. However, most patients with chronic pancreatitis do not drink this amount, researchers said.
For this study, researchers from the University of Pittsburgh interviewed 1,000 patients (540 with chronic pancreatitis and 460 with recurrent acute pancreatitis -- which occurs on two or more occasions and may become chronic) and 695 healthy people about their drinking and smoking habits.
About one-fourth of all of the study's participants reported being lifetime abstainers. Among those with chronic pancreatitis, 38 percent of men and 11 percent of women said they drink five or more drinks a day compared with 17 percent of men and 5.5 percent of women with recurrent acute pancreatitis and 10 percent of men and 3.6 percent of women in the healthy group.
Compared with light drinking and abstaining, very heavy drinking was associated with triple the odds of developing chronic pancreatitis, the researchers said. But they cautioned that fewer chronic pancreatitis patients than expected (about one-fourth) drank at this level. They said other factors, such as genetic mutations, also contribute to pancreatitis risk.
As for smoking, the researchers found cigarette use was an independent risk factor for both chronic pancreatitis and recurrent acute pancreatitis and those with chronic pancreatitis tended to smoke more and had smoked for a longer period of time.
SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, June 8, 2009
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