OBJECTIVES:

This study evaluated whether there is an association between the use of celecoxib and acute pancreatitis in Taiwan.

METHODS:

We conducted a case-control study using the database of the Taiwan National Health Insurance Program. The participants comprised 5,095 subjects, aged 20-84 years, with a first admission episode of acute pancreatitis from 2000 to 2011 as the cases and 20,380 randomly selected sex-matched and age-matched subjects without acute pancreatitis as the controls. The absence of celecoxib prescription was defined as "never used." Current use of celecoxib was defined as subjects who had received at least one prescription for celecoxib within 3 days before diagnosis with acute pancreatitis. A multivariate unconditional logistic regression model was used to calculate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) for acute pancreatitis associated with the use of celecoxib.

RESULTS:

Compared with subjects who never used celecoxib, the adjusted OR of acute pancreatitis was 5.62 in subjects with current use of celecoxib (95% CI=3.33-9.46).

CONCLUSIONS:

The current use of celecoxib is associated with an increased risk of acute pancreatitis.