Immunosuppressive drugs for the treatment of autoimmune pancreatitis

Autoimmune pancreatitis is one of the few diseases of the pancreas characterized by the possibility of curing the illness using immunosuppressant drugs. In this paper, the therapeutic approach used to treat autoimmune pancreatitis patients and the clinical outcome related to each treatment modality were reviewed. Steroids are useful in alleviating the symptoms of the acute presentation of autoimmune pancreatitis, but some questions remain open, such as a shared definition of the disease's remission as well as autoimmune pancreatitis relapse, the dosage of steroids in the symptomatic phase of the disease and the duration of steroid therapy. Finally, it should be determined if other immunosuppressive nonsteroidal drugs could become first-line therapy in patients with autoimmune pancreatitis without jaundice and without atrophic pancreas.