Natural history of pancreatic involvement in paediatric inflammatory bowel disease.

Background: Few case reports describe the clinical features of pancreatic involvement in inflammatory bowel disease.

Aim: To investigate prevalence and disease course of inflammatory bowel disease children with pancreatitis and with exclusive hyperamylasemia and hyperlipasemia.

Methods: We used a web-registry to retrospectively identify paediatric inflammatory bowel disease patients with hyperamylasemia and hyperlipasemia. Participants were re-evaluated at 6 months and 1 year.

Results: From a total of 649 paediatric patients, we found 27 with hyperamylasemia and hyperlipasemia (4.1%). Eleven patients (1.6%) fulfilled diagnostic criteria for acute pancreatitis. Female gender was significantly associated with acute pancreatitis (p=0.04). Twenty-five children (92.5%) had colonic disease. At 6 months 1/11 children with acute pancreatitis (9%) showed acute recurrent pancreatitis, while 1 patient (9%) had persistent hyperamylasemia and hyperlipasemia. At 12 months, 1 patient showed chronic pancreatitis (9.1%). Of the 16 children with exclusive hyperamylasemia and hyperlipasemia, 4 developed acute pancreatitis (25%), while 1 patient (6.2%) still presented exclusive hyperamylasemia and hyperlipasemia at 6 months. At 12 months, 11/16 patients (68.7%) reached a remission of pancreatic involvement, whereas 5 remaining patients (32.3%) had persistent hyperamylasemia and hyperlipasemia.

Conclusions: In inflammatory bowel disease children, acute pancreatitis is more common in colonic disease and in female gender. Pancreatic function should be monitored, considering that pancreatic damage may evolve.