Acute pancreatitis is an inflammatory disease of the pancreas with sudden onset. The severity of acute pancreatitis may vary from mild to life threatening. There are many risk factors for acute pancreatitis, among which gallstones and alcohol abuse are most widely known. Drugs are considered as potential risk factors for acute pancreatitis, but have received relatively little attention in the medical literature. In this thesis, several epidemiological studies were performed to assess the relationship between drug use and acute pancreatitis. To estimate the public health impact, the incidence and mortality of acute pancreatitis were studied in chapter 2. Chapter 3 starts the exploration of the relation between drug use and acute pancreatitis with a description and evaluation of spontaneous reports on drug-associated acute pancreatitis. Next, we systematically reviewed the literature to summarise current knowledge on drug-associated acute pancreatitis. On the basis of the descriptive studies described in chapter 3, we conducted several analytic epidemiologic studies to quantify the association between use anti-ulcer drugs, cardiovascular drugs, psychotropic drugs, vitamin D, lipid lowering drugs and acute pancreatitis in chapter 4. The results of our studies on drug-associated acute pancreatitis are discussed in chapter 5.

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The studies in thesis were sponsored by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientifi c Research (NWO) Zon MW, Vereniging Trustfonds Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam, The European Commission (BIOMED II, contract number BMH4-CT95-0467), AstraZeneca R&D, Mölndal, Sweden, and the Medical Products Agency, Sweden. Their fi nancial support is gratefully acknowledged
B.H.Ch. Stricker (Bruno) , J.H.P. Wilson (Paul)
Erasmus University Rotterdam
hdl.handle.net/1765/41485
Erasmus MC: University Medical Center Rotterdam

Eland, I. (2003, January 2). Drug-induced acute pancreatitis. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/41485