Pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic carcinoma describes the pancreas having cancerous cells arise.

Now a healthy pancreas has two types of glands, exocrine glands which sends digestive enzymes off to the small intestine, and endocrine glands which help regulate metabolism in the body, for example, maintaining normal blood sugar.

Over 95% of pancreatic tumors develop in the pancreas’s exocrine tissues, and of these, tumors arising in the epithelial cells lining the pancreatic ducts account for the vast majority of cases.

This type of pancreatic cancer is known as pancreatic adenocarcinoma due to the cells glandular-like (“adeno”) appearance under the microscope, often pancreatic adenocarcinoma is used interchangeably with pancreatic carcinoma.

These tumors typically form in the head or neck of the pancreas, but in some cases tumors form in the tail.

Around 5% of exocrine pancreatic carcinomas are caused by malignancies in the acinar cells, which are the cells that produce the digestive enzymes like trypsinogen, and around 1% are cystadenocarcinomas, or malignant cysts.

There are also other types of pancreatic cancer, but those are even more rare.

Generally, pancreatic carcinoma is caused by genetic mutations in the ductal epithelial cells, and these mutations might activate oncogenes which promote cancer or inactivate tumor suppressor genes.

Either way, this can lead to uncontrolled cell growth caused by the disruptions of the cell signalling pathways that regulate cell survival and growth, as well as multiple immune system responses like inflammation and stress responses.

Although it’s not exactly clear how the genetic mutations that trigger pancreatic carcinoma develop, there are some well known modifiable risk factors like smoking which increases the risk by two to five-fold, obesity, as well as eating a diet high in red meat.

There are also some non-modifiable risk factors like being male, being African American, and being over 65 years old.

Also, certain other diseases seem to increase the risk of developing pancreatic carcinoma as well, like diabetes, chronic pancreatitis, and liver cirrhosis, all of which are linked to excessive alcohol consumption, so there does seem to be an indirect relationship between pancreatic carcinoma and alcohol as well.