Note: Diabetes Mellitus Secondary to Idiopathic Chronic Calcifying Pancreatitis in an Adolescent Woman

Abstract

We describe the results of metabolic studies in a 17-year-old woman with diabetes mellitus which was the initial manifestation of idiopathic chronic calcifying pancreatitis (CCP). These studies were done on 2 occasions, 5 months and 5 years after the onset of diabetes, when her diabetes could be managed by glibenclamide and insulin, respectively. Five months after the onset of diabetes, oral glucose produced a small increase in insulin and a paradoxical rise in both glucagon immunoreactivity (GI) and growth hormone (GH). By contrast, arginine-stimulated responses of the three hormones were normal. No increase in GI and a blunted rise in GH resulted from an insulin-induced decrease in blood glucose. Five years later, when CCP was demonstrated by roentogenologic examinations and tests of pancreatic exocrine function, oral glucose was followed by a flat and depressed response of C-peptide immunoreactivity and a markedly elevated response of gut glucagon-like-immunoreactivity (gut GLI). There were delayed and extremely low responses of pancreatic polypeptide to a test meal, irrespective whether or not her diabetes required treatment with insulin. These results demonstrate that CCP can cause diabetes in adolescenes, as it does in adults, and that the adolescent woman described here had impaired responses of PP and gut GLI as well as insulin, GI and GH, especially to changes in blood glucose levels. © 1983, The Japan Endocrine Society. All rights reserved.