Abstract
To investigate the changes of pancreatic islet cells in chronic pancreatitis, immunohistochemical quantitation of the distribution of insulin (B), glucagon (A), somatostatin (D) and pancreatic polypeptide (PP) producing cells was performed with the pancreatic tissues removed from patients with severe chronic pancreatitis and nonpancreatitic controls. In chronic pancreatitis, as compared to the controls, there were a significant increase in the proportion of A, D and PP cells and a decrease in the proportion of B cells in the pancreatic islets distributed in the parenchymal tissues. In the fibrotic tissues, on the other hand, two distinct types of islets were found. One was rather large and rich in the number of islet cells. The proportion of each endocrine cell was similar to that found in the islets in the parenchyma. The other was small and irregular in shape and was associated with a decrease of islet cells. Such a type of islet was predominantly composed of B cells.
Together with the histopathological finding of the presence of ductuloinsular proliferation, it was suggested that the latter type of islets is under regeneration.
