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Pancreatic hyperamylasemia during acute gastroenteritis: incidence and clinical relevance

Metadata Updated: July 24, 2025

Background Many case reports of acute pancreatitis have been reported but, up to now, pancreatic abnormalities during acute gastroenteritis have not been studied prospectively.

      Objectives
      To evaluate the incidence and the clinical significance of hyperamylasemia in 507 consecutive adult patients with acute gastroenteritis.


      Methods
      The clinical significance of hyperamylasemia, related predisposing factors and severity of gastroenteritis were assessed.


      Results
      Hyperamylasemia was detected in 10.2 % of patients studied. Although amylasemia was found over four times the normal values in three cases, the clinical features of acute pancreatitis were recorded in only one case (0.1%). Hyperamylasemia was more likely (17%) where a microorganism could be identified in the stools (p < 0.01). Among patients with positive stool samples, Salmonella spp. and in particular S. enteritidis, was the microorganism most frequently associated with hyperamylasemia [17/84 (20.2 %) and 10/45 (22.2%), respectively], followed by Rotavirus, Clostridium difficile and Campylobacter spp. Patients with hyperamylasemia had more severe gastroenteritis with an increased incidence of fever (80 % vs 50.6 %, O.R. 3.0; P < 0.01), dehydration (18% vs 8.5%; O.R. 2.5; P < 0.05), and a higher mean number of evacuations per day (9.2 vs 7.5; P < 0.05) than those with amylasemia in the normal range. Hyperamylasemia was significantly associated with cholelithiasis, (30.0 % vs 10.7%, O.R. 3.5; P < 0.01) and chronic gastritis or duodenal ulceration (22.0 % vs 10.2%, O.R. 2.4, P < 0.05).


      Conclusions
      Hyperamylasemia is relatively frequent, and is associated with severe gastroenteritis. However, acute pancreatitis in the setting of acute gastroenteritis, is a rare event.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date July 24, 2025
Metadata Updated Date July 24, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from Healthdata.gov

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date July 24, 2025
Metadata Updated Date July 24, 2025
Publisher National Institutes of Health
Maintainer
NIH
Identifier https://healthdata.gov/api/views/ar5r-8xz4
Data First Published 2025-07-14
Data Last Modified 2025-07-23
Category NIH
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 009:25
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://healthdata.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id b5575bb2-b381-46f4-940c-1835ad2f74d2
Harvest Source Id 651e43b2-321c-4e4c-b86a-835cfc342cb0
Harvest Source Title Healthdata.gov
Homepage URL https://healthdata.gov/d/ar5r-8xz4
Program Code 009:034
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 4fe51cf1fc4ea96b8c2ffa45f9f2ce6f73aa42c6e678391088e7e7249fb5819f
Source Schema Version 1.1

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