Hemin to Prevent Post-ERCP (Endoscopic Retrograde Cholangiopancreatography) Acute Pancreatitis

Overview

ERCP (endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography) has been largely demonstrated to be effective in multiple bilio-pancreatic indications. However, one of the feared complication of this technique is acute pancreatitis, which happens in 5 to 25% of cases. Some patient groups have been demonstrated to present a higher risk linked to individual factors or to the procedure. Some interventions (endoscopic or pharmacologic) have been evaluated to reduce the incidence of this complication but each has his own inconvenient. Recently, the activation of heme oxygenase (HO) by intraperitoneal administration of hemin has been demonstrated to be effective in prevention and treatment of acute pancreatitis mice models. This protective effect has been associated to intrapancreatic HO-1 positive macrophage recruitment activated by hemin. The investigators thus propose to conduct a prospective randomized double blind controlled trial to demonstrate a protective effect of hemin administration against post-ERCP acute pancreatitis in high risk patients.

Patients for who a pancreatic stent placement is indicated will be excluded from the study. The aims of this study are: 1) to study in a pathophysiologic point of view the activation of HO-1 by hemin in human and its protective effect in post-ERCP acute pancreatitis incidence. 2) to use the human situation of post-ERCP acute pancreatitis as early pancreatitis model to study the administration of hemin as treatment of acute pancreatitis in general.

Conditions