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Chronic pancreatitis is characterized histologically by an irreversible and irregular scarring of exocrine parenchyma with ductal changes by inflammatory processes1 and morphologically it is also defined as progressive pancreatic fibrosis and atrophy of the pancreatic exocrine cell mass.2 The mechanisms by which these fibrotic processes occur are not fully understood. It has been shown that extracellular matrix (ECM) components are distributed in tissue samples of both healthy and diseased pancreas, suggesting an increased deposition of disorganized matrix components in chronic pancreatitis.3,4 Oxygen free radicals (OFRs) mediate an important step in the initiation of experimental acute pancreatitis. 5 Although the first to study a possible involvement of OFR were using an ex vivo canine pancreas preparation,6 currently cerulein-induced pancreatitis model is used most commonly because of simplicity and high reproducibility and it was known that the histological changes of pancreas in such animal model were mediated by OFRs.7 However lack of adequate experimental animal models for chronic pancreatitis, the involvement of OFRs in the chronic inflammation of pancreatic gland has not been studied yet. Several clinical findings such as increased lipid peroxidation markers in the duodenal juice and serum of patients with chronic pancreatitis and increased conjugated diene concentrations in pancreatic tissues suggested the major contribution of oxygen free radicals in the pathogenesis of chronic pancreatitis.8 So far there have been no studies on potential effects of oxidative stress and free radicals in animal model of chronic pancreatitis. This study was aimed to establish the mice model of chronic pancreatitis as well as to prove the involvement of OFRs in chronic pancreatitis to show the usefulness of antioxidant, DA-9601 in the current experiment, in the treatment of chronic pancreatitis. DA-9601, a novel antioxidative phytochemical derived from the ethanol extract of artemisia asiatica, remedy used for long time in folk medicine for several inflammatory diseases, were administered. According to the study of our group (39, 40), this substance was found to possess antioxidative, anti-inflammatory, and cytoprotective actions.
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