Pancreatic response to graded doses of synthetic secretin: Comparison between intravenous and pernasal administration in man

Abstract

The response of the human pancreas to varying doses of pure synthetic secretin administered intravenously and, for comparison, 8 days later in the form of snuff was examined, intraindividually, in 10 healthy test subjects. After intubation of the stomach and duodenum and continuous instillation of radioactive vitamin B12, the recovery rate of the marker substance was measured in duodenal aspirates and employed to compute the pancreatic bicarbonate and enzyme outputs. The dose-response relationship between pancreatic bicarbonate production and varying doses of synthetic secretin administered intravenously and in the form of snuff, was good. The pancreatic response to a dose of secretin snuff was only about 1/25 of the response obtained with the same dose of secretin injected intravenously. The level of the pancreatic enzyme output remained relatively uninfluenced by varying doses of synthetic secretin.