Protective and Therapeutic Properties of Obestatin

Acute pancreatitis (AP) still remains associated with high mortality rates reaching as high as 30% despite substantial improvements in the management of the disease. This is due to complex disease aetiology, its diverse clinical course, as well as, the lack of targeted treatment owning to the poor understanding of its pathogenesis. A number of histological mechanisms have been associated with AP and are responsible for permanent morphological and structural changes of the gland in the course of severe AP.

The article "Pre-treatment with obestatin reduces the severity of ischemia/reperfusion-induced acute pancreatitis in rats" provides fascinating data how administration of obestatin inhibits the development of ischemia/reperfusion-induced AP. Authors’ conclusions, together with previous findings, suggest that protective effect of obestatin in the pancreas is universal and independent of the primary cause of acute pancreatitis.

The observations are in agreement that different initial causes can damage pancreas through same mechanisms or even through different mechanisms, which, however, share same end-point biochemical and histological markers (very uncommon in human biology), as obestatin probably expresses its protective effect, according to the results, through controlling all these biochemical and histopathological parameters which definitely express a specific mechanism of pancreatic damage (oxidative stress).

The study prompts a question about what should be an acceptable possible way of obestatin to fail to express its protection in case of ischemia/reperfusion-induced AP. The phenomenon of obestatin protection seems to be oxidative stress- and dose-dependent. Accordingly, the reason for the statistically insignificant blood flow improvement although statistically significant oxidative stress scavenging, remains unknown. Relative changes in the expression of these results do not alter, however, the core issue of this important question.

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Jessica
Editorial assistant
Pancreatic Disorder and Therapy