Antioxidants

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ANTIOXIDANT THERAPY FOR PANCREATITIS - BIO-ANTOX

(This information has been summaried

from TWO articles and vastly

edited and changed for ease of reading

and describes a new form of treatment

developed by Manchester Royal

Infirmary. It has NOTHING to do with

the Pancreatitis Supporters Network,

we are only including this for information.

ALL inquiries should be made in

the first instance to Margaret O'Brien,

Chairman of the MRI Support Group)

Causes of pancreatitis

There is accumulating evidence

that oxidant stress resulting from an

excess of pro-oxidant over anti-oxidant

has a key role in acute oedematous

pancreatitis as well as painful

exacerbation's of chronic disease.

Cytokines like platelet activation factor

(PAF) have also been shown to be

involved with development of the acute

disease in animal models, but it is likely

that the prime insult which triggers

pancreatitis is oxidant stress.

DEVELOPMENT OF ANTIOXIDANT

THERAPY

Background:

There is increasing evidence that

habitually poor diets render body organs

vulnerable to oxidative stress, and

hence tissue injury, when free radical

load exceeds antioxidant defence capability.

In general terms this load may

derive from such dissimilar sources as

ultraviolet light, substance abuse (for

example alcohol or cigarettes), and,

above all, environmental pollutants.

Antioxidant therapy?

From this, it would seem likely that

therapy with antioxidants should help

prevent pancreatitis. A randomised,

controlled, double-blind, double dummy,

crossover study from the Manchester

Royal Infirmary has shown this

to be the case.

Twenty patients with chronic pancreatitis

(8 idiopathic, 7 alcoholic and

5 idiopathic acute) entered the study in

which micro nutrients antioxidant therapy

was compared with placebo, each

for a 20 week period. Patients took

six tablets of selenium beta-CE

(Wassen International) and eight tablets

of methionine ( Medical Ltd) in

divided doses, giving a daily total of:

600mg organic selenium

9000 IU beta-carotene

0.54g vitamin C

270 IU vitamin E

2g methionine

Results: This was a thorough and

detailed study. The bare-boned results

were that while six patients had an

attack while on placebo, not one had

an attack while on active medication.

Pain scores were significantly lower on

active treatment (than) on placebo and

at baseline.

Benefits and costs:Treatment

would entail a maximum cost of 15

pounds a month a month (1990 prices),

with possibly a 50 percent reduction

after six months. This financial

outlay is small compared with the cost

in terms of the mortality, morbidity,

narcotic use, malnutrition and brittle

diabetes of near-total pancreatectomy.

Adverse effects and precautions:

Long-term observations have not

shown significant adverse effects in a

clinical experience of some 500 patients.

One subject developed symptoms

of schizophrenia two years after

starting on a dose of 4g methionine

per day in conjunction with other antioxidants.

In the light of a published

review which had exonerated methionine

from side-effects, unless given to

patients with chronic schizophrenia, it

was of interest to discover that the

patient's mother had committed suicide

against a background of schizophrenia

and that two maternal aunts

had suffered chronic depressive illness.

There has been no such problem

at MRI before or since.

Hypercarotenaemia has been a predictable

biochemical outcome in patients

treated with bio-antox because

the of extremely high bio availability of

beta-carote from this formulation compared

to the commercial " over the

counter " preparations with which the

clinical trials were done, and which

were used at the MRI until Bio-antox

became available. Hypercarotenaemia

has no clinical implications, Except for

possible cosmetic embarrassment,

and the preparation has now undergone

reformulation to avoid this. Careful

monitoring is advisable in patients

with organic brain syndromes, haemachromatosis,

renal failure and glucose-

6-phosphate-dehydrogenase

deficiency.