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The relationship between acute pancreatitis and the development of pancreatic cancer is unclear. While acute pancreatitis remains common, pancreatic cancer is relatively rare, and some risk factors for acute pancreatitis are shared with pancreatic cancer (e.g., alcohol can cause acute pancreatitis but can also lead to chronic pancreatitis, a major risk factor for pancreatic cancer).
To further investigate the link between these two illnesses, researchers followed about 50,000 Swedish residents with a single prior episode of acute pancreatitis and 140,000 matched residents without prior acute pancreatitis for 1.2 million person-years (median, 5.3 years). Among the 769 people who developed pancreatic cancer, 70% had at least one prior episode …