2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Study Design and Particpants
We present a cross-sectional study of 50 patients with chronic pancreatitis (CP) under follow-up at San Cecilio University Hospital between February 2015 and June 2016. Inclusion criteria were: age > 18 years; fulfilment of Rosemont diagnostic criteria for CP in patients diagnosed by endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) [
10]; the presence of pancreatic calcifications or dilatation of the main pancreatic duct with parenchymal alterations in those diagnosed by abdominal ultrasound or computed tomography; and a positive histologic result in those diagnosed by pancreatic biopsy. Exclusion criteria were the presence of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), refusal to participate in the study, and failure to attend follow-up sessions. PDAC was ruled out by a recent (<6-month) computed tomography, magnetic resonance, or EUS scan.
All patients signed written informed consent to participate in the study, which was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration and current Spanish legislation, preserving the confidentiality of participants and anonymizing personal data. The protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of our hospital (approval number 1269-M1-19).
All patients in the pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy (PERT) group were undergoing PERT at the time of laboratory testing and consumed the same amount of enzyme replacement (2 capsules of 25,000 lipase units at breakfast, lunch, and evening meal). Additionally, all patients with a vitamin D deficit were receiving treatment for this condition at the time of testing. Regarding trace elements, all patients underwent a nutritional intervention on healthy life habits, including dietary recommendations to improve the consumption and supply of nutrients.
2.2. Assessment of Pancreatic Insufficiency, Nutritional Status, and Pancreatic Complications
Testing was carried out at the time of study enrolment, when an interview was conducted, and a nutritional profile was established. The exocrine pancreatic function of patients was tested using the BioServ Diagnostics Pancreatic Elastase ELISA kit (BioServ Analytics Ltd., Rostock, Germany) to determine fecal elastase-1 (FE-1) levels, following the manufacturer’s instructions. FE-1 ≥200 μg/g was considered to indicate normal pancreatic function, FE-1 = 100–200 μg/g mild-moderate exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI), and FE-1 < 100 μg/g severe EPI. Found at the time of elastase testing, all stools analyzed had a consistency of 1–4 on the Bristol scale. The nutritional status of CP patients with and without EPI was evaluated by determining their body mass index (BMI), their blood concentrations of glucose, glycosylated hemoglobin, total proteins, albumin, prealbumin, somatomedin C, ferritin, transferrin, triglycerides, cholesterol, vitamin D, magnesium, and hemoglobin, and their lymphocyte count.
We studied the presence of pancreatic complications secondary to CP, including compressive (pseudocyst and abscess), stenotic (biliary and duodenal), and vascular (splenoportal axis thrombosis and pseudoaneurysm) complications, the development of type 3c diabetes mellitus (DM)—the diagnostic criterion for diabetes was plasma glucose ≥ 126 mg/dL (7.0 mmol/L) or hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) ≥ 6.5% (48 mmol/mol)—and the onset of cardiovascular events, defined as major (acute coronary syndrome or stroke) or minor (peripheral arterial disease or deep vein thrombosis). Data on cardiovascular events were gathered by reviewing the clinical records of the Emergency Department and the corresponding Departments of Cardiology, Neurology, and/or Vascular Surgery. Evaluation of chronic abdominal pain was based on the need for analgesics and on the WHO analgesic ladder, referring patients to the Pain Unit of the Anesthesiology Department when the pain was difficult to control. Information on pancreatic abscesses, acute cholangitis, and exacerbation of pancreatitis was collected by reviewing the hospital admissions of patients. The diagnosis of duodenal stenosis was based on the presence of recurrent vomiting and on radiologic and endoscopic findings and was confirmed by biopsy. Pseudocysts and splenoportal axis thrombosis were identified in imaging studies performed every 6–12 months. Finally, the diagnosis of biliary stenosis was based on hepatic profile alterations and cholangio-magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) findings.
2.3. Statistical Analysis
SPSS v.21.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA) was used for the statistical analyses. After a descriptive analysis, proportions were compared between the groups using the chi-square test or, when conditions were not met, Fisher’s exact test. We applied the non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test to compare mean values of quantitative variables between two groups, and the Kruskal–Wallis test to compare mean values among more than two groups. p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
4. Discussion
The first cause of EPI in adults is the presence of CP, followed by cystic fibrosis and pancreatic surgery [
3]. During this study of patients with CP under follow-up at our hospital, we used FE-1 as diagnostic test for EPI because it is non-invasive, easily applied, economic, and offers a high positive predictive value in advanced stages. However, the main limitations of this test are its low sensitivity at earlier stages of EPI and its false positive rate, which may be influenced by the soft consistency of feces or the presence of small intestine disease. The likelihood of false positives was reduced in our study by excluding fecal samples that were not solid [
1,
5].
An EPI prevalence of 60% was found, similar to the prevalence of 64.1% reported in the “PANCR-EVOL” multi-center study of Spanish patients with CP [
11]. During the present investigation, 83.3% of the patients with EPI had FE-1 levels <100 μg/g, indicating an advanced stage of the disease. Similarly, a study of Chilean patients with CP found a comparable prevalence (66.9%) [
12], whereas another study in Spain reported a lower prevalence of 38.8% [
13].
During the present study, 18% of the patients diagnosed with EPI were not under treatment for this complication and were immediately started on treatment with PERT. Conversely, and similar to the findings of the PANCR-EVOL study [
11], PERT was being received by 35% of the patients without EPI. These data underscore the need for an accurate diagnosis of EPI in patients with CP, given the increased morbidity and mortality risk if adequate treatment is not applied [
14].
It has previously been reported that most patients with CP had EPI after a median of 12 years post-diagnosis [
2]; hence, we set this value as the cutoff point to analyze the differences between groups with and without EPI after this time. Although there was a higher percentage of patients with a CP history of >12 years in the group with versus without EPI, the difference did not reach statistical significance. However, other studies report the development of EPI after a shorter history of CP [
15].
During the present study, only 23.3% of the patients with EPI had never been drinkers and only 36.7% had never been smokers. The consumption of tobacco and alcohol is considered to be a prime cause of CP [
16], and the synergetic effects of these substances have been found to produce major stress in the endoplasmic reticulum of pancreatic acinar cells, inducing their death [
17]. There was a trend in our sample toward a higher proportion of alcohol drinkers in the group with versus without EPI (
p = 0.051).
The presence of EPI is associated with a poor absorption of macronutrients and micronutrients, making these patients especially prone to malnutrition. Nutritional markers related to CP include fat-soluble vitamins, vitamin B12, zinc, magnesium, calcium, and folic acid [
1], and it has been proposed that their combination may assist in the diagnosis of EPI [
2]. We used the most frequent analytical and anthropometric parameters to assess the nutritional status of patients.
During our study, we observed no significant association between BMI and the presence of EPI, although the majority of the patients without EPI were overweight, while the majority of those with EPI were normal weight, and it was previously reported that patients with CP are more frequently normal or overweight than underweight [
18]. However, it should be borne in mind that BMI provides a limited evaluation of body composition [
19], and some of our patients with “normal” weight showed signs of protein malnutrition, with a major loss of muscle mass (sarcopenia) [
20].
Compared to the patients without EPI, those with EPI evidenced significantly higher levels of glycosylated hemoglobin. Significantly lower levels of prealbumin and magnesium were observed in those with EPI, indicating a possible malabsorption of macronutrients (proteins) and micronutrients (trace elements) in these patients. Mean magnesium levels in the group without EPI were 2.001 mg/dL, very similar to those obtained in the study by Lindkvist et al., (2.09 mg/dL) [
2].
Vitamin D was selected from among the fat-soluble vitamins because it is routinely analyzed in primary care and hospital centers as a known marker of malnutrition. Additionally, coagulation levels serve as an indirect marker of vitamin K and were normal in all study participants. We found no statistically significant differences between the groups regarding vitamin D, or in albumin, somatomedin C, triglycerides, hemoglobin, ferritin, transferrin, or lymphocytes. However, there was a trend toward lower cholesterol levels and higher glucose levels in the patients with versus without EPI, suggesting that a significant difference might emerge with a larger sample size. Hirano et al., (2014) divided patients with CP between those with and without type 3c DM and observed significantly lower total cholesterol levels in the former group (164 mg/dL versus 183 mg/dL, respectively,
p = 0.0028) [
21]. Seen in our sample, the frequency of DM was higher in the group with EPI, although statistical significance was not reached. As expected in patients with CP, which is associated with massive islet destruction, the most frequent type of DM was 3c [
22]. Additionally, the presence of DM of any type in our study was higher in the group with EPI, although the difference was not statistically significant (60% in patients with EPI versus 35% in those without,
p = 0.083). However, as noted above, glycosylated hemoglobin levels were significantly higher in the group with EPI (
p = 0.007). These data indicate that exocrine and endocrine pancreatic insufficiency develops in parallel.
The prevalence of DM was higher in our study (50%) than in multi-center studies with a larger sample size, such as that by Schwarzenberg et al., (30%), which also found a significant difference in DM prevalence between children and adults, explained by the time taken for the disease to develop and the role of tobacco and alcohol in its etiology [
23]. The higher prevalence in our investigation may be due in part to a greater motivation to participate in the study among patients with CP and functional loss (EPI or DM) than among patients with PC who are asymptomatic and have no signs of malnutrition or DM development, who would be less aware of their disease.
Seen in our study population, the most frequent complications of CP were the presence of pseudocysts (50%), chronic pain (46%), biliary stenosis (26%), and pancreatitis exacerbation (20%), as also observed in the PANCR-EVOL study [
11], although the rate of these complications was higher in the present population.
Compared to the patients with EPI who were not on PERT, the frequency of DM was significantly higher in those undergoing this therapy, whose glycemic control was worse (higher glycemia and HbA1C values), and their magnesium and prealbumin levels were significantly lower. These findings can be attributed to a positive association between the development of EPI and that of DM, which is corroborated by the higher frequency of DM in the group of patients with severe EPI. Concerning this, Hardt et al., proposed that DM is not a direct cause of EPI but rather a consequence of the CP that also produced EPI, through the destruction of both exocrine and endocrine pancreatic tissue [
24]. These data support the idea that the pancreas functions as a whole, and that exocrine and endocrine disorders inevitably have repercussions on each other [
25].
Finally, in comparison to patients with mild/moderate EPI, the frequencies of diabetes mellitus and pseudocyst-related complications were significantly higher in those with severe EPI, whose FE-1 levels were significantly lower, as expected. These findings suggest that the clinical management of this type of patient should include a close follow-up protocol to facilitate early diagnosis and treatment and to avoid the development of associated complications.