Clinical insights into drug-associated pancreatic injury

Purpose of review: Drug-induced pancreatitis is one of the top three causes of acute pancreatitis. A drug exposure is traditionally determined to be the cause of pancreatitis only after other possible and common causes of pancreatitis have been excluded.

Recent findings: In this review, we challenge this traditional notion of drug-induced pancreatitis as a diagnosis of exclusion. Instead, we propose to shift the paradigm of conceptualizing what we term drug-associated pancreatic injury (DAPI); as a continuum of pancreatic injury that can be concomitant with other risk factors. The aims of this targeted review are to harness recent literature to build a foundation for conceptualizing DAPI, to highlight specific drugs associated with DAPI, and to describe a framework for future studies of DAPI.

Summary: Our hope is that probing and characterizing the mechanisms underlying the various types of DAPI will lead to safer use of the DAPI-inducing drugs by minimizing the adverse event of pancreatitis.