Secretin for Acute Pancreatitis

Acute pancreatitis is a frequently devastating pancreatic inflammatory process that results in extensive morbidity, mortality, and hospitalization costs. The incidence of acute pancreatitis has been increasing over the last decade with an overall mortality rate of 5%, although it may be as high as 30% in the most severe cases. It was the most common inpatient gastrointestinal diagnosis in 2009, totaling over 270,000 hospitalizations with estimated "inpatient costs" of over 2.5 billion dollars in the United States. However, despite the significant impact to both patients and the healthcare system, there is no proven pharmacologic therapy that improves important clinical outcomes in acute pancreatitis. The release of bicarbonate rich fluid into the pancreatic duct from the ductal cells is an important mechanism to protect against pancreatitis by two distinct mechanisms: 1. "Flushing" activated enzymes out of the pancreas and into the duodenum thereby preventing accumulation of activated enzymes within the pancreatic acinus 2. Directly alkalinizing the acinar cells, which limits intra-acinar cell damage by improving trafficking of inappropriately activated intra-acinar enzymes along the apical membrane. In addition to standard care, patients will be divided into 4 cohorts. Cohorts 1,2 and 3 will be treated with different doses of intravenous synthetic human secretin. Cohort X will not receive human secretin, but all datapoints and specimens will be collected. The patient cohorts will be entered into the study as follows: Cohort X; Cohort 1; Cohort 2; Cohort 3. 5 patients in each cohort will be evaluated at each center (for a total of n=10 at both centers for each cohort). Dosing will start within 24 hours of hospitalization with no further synthetic human secretin administration beyond Day 3. Patients will continue to be followed for 7 days or until discharge, whichever comes first. Any data recorded to that point would be included in an intent-to-treat analysis. The