Transition of rat pancreatic juice edema into acute pancreatitis by single ethanol administration

The present study was done to determine the influence of single oral, intravenous and intraperitoneal ethanol administration at pre-existing pancreatic juice edema on frequency and severity of acute pancreatitis (AP). The rats were divided into six control (isolated treatment) and five study groups (edema plus varied ethanol application). 24 h postoperatively quality and quantity of macroscopic and histopathologic changes were graded on an arbitrary scale. While in the controls AP was not induced in any rat, in the study groups extrapancreatic fat necrosis and histologic lesions of the pancreas were found in the majority of animals. The individual rats revealed a remarkable variation of the severity of changes. A detailed differentiation of pancreatic necroses revealed a dominance of intrapancreatic fat necrosis and acinar necrosis at the periphery of lobules. The findings observed were widely independent of the way of ethanol administration. The present approach offers a simple and reproducible animal model to study the influence of acute ethanol application on development of AP and hints on the involvement of disturbances of the pancreatic microcirculation and of acinar cell metabolism in the pathogenesis of ethanol-induced acute pancreatitis.