Discerning Pancreatitis from Pancreatic Cancer

Doctors have had trouble misdiagnosing pancreatic cancer in the past. Autoimmune pancreatitis is a “troublesome inflammation of the organ” where a lump of hardened tissue can sometimes form and is often diagnosed as a tumor. Ten percent of surgeries begun to remove a pancreatic tumor find a mass from pancreatitis instead.

New research has shown that in cases of autoimmune pancreatitis the body creates antibodies that “attack a harmless enzyme found in the pancreas,” which can cause significant damage. Currently, the only test to distinguish the two is a biopsy, which can be invasive and expensive. However, these antibodies can be considered as a possible determining factor in diagnostics of the pancreas because there are not present at all in healthy patients and only seldom in cancer patients.

The researchers further analyzed the blood of a pancreatitis patient and found the antibodies targeting plasminogen binding protein (PBP), which they found to have a matching enzyme in the human pancreas, UBR2. This has led the team to hypothesize that autoimmune pancreatitis may be caused by a “coincidence in nature.” Because of the similarity of UBR2 to the PBP, many UBR2 get attacked by the immune system as well, damaging the tissue.