Hormones as regulators of pancreatic secretion in man

At the beginning of the century, Pavlov suggested that the pancreas was exclusively controlled by the nervous reflex mechanisms. In 1902, Bayliss & Starling published their experiments on secretin and claimed that the nervous regulation is 'superfluous and improbable'. In the following decades, especially after the discovery of CCK, it was generally held that exocrine pancreatic secretion is regulated mainly by hormones. The present summary clearly demonstrates the importance of the cholinergic system in regulating exocrine pancreatic secretion and the complexity of neurohormonal interactions. The question is no longer hormones or nerves, but rather a very complicated coordination of neural, hormonal and possible paracrine effects, resulting in the control of exocrine pancreatic activity. In this complex regulatory system, the cholinergic control is central with hormones such as CCK or secretion modulating the response.