Alcohol consumption pattern and serum lipids in alcoholic cirrhosis and pancreatitis. A comparative study.

Drinking and dietary habits and serum lipids were studied in two groups of chronic alcoholics, one with liver cirrhosis and the other with acute or recurrent pancreatitis, with the intention of investigating whether these factors could be of importance for the seemingly haphazard occurrence of different organ damages in chronic alcoholics. Our data show that patients with alcoholic pancreatitis have a more intermittent drinking pattern than patients with alcoholic cirrhosis. The amount of alcohol required to cause pancreatitis seems to be smaller than what is necessary to produce cirrhosis. Although none of the cirrhotics had clinical symptoms of pancreatitis, 58% of the autopsied cirrhotics had some pancreatic damage at autopsy. It may be that symptomatic pancreatitis prevents the patients from drinking the larger amounts of alcohol necessary to produce cirrhosis. Dietary habits or occurrence of lipid abnormalities during abstinence did not differ between the groups.