Pancreatitis or inflammation of pancreas is a serious disease which has increasingly become common among patients with diabetes. Studies have shown diabetes patients to be three times more prone to pancreatitis compared to those without diabetes. (Rebecca A. Noel, DRPH, MSPH et al and her team conducted a retrospective cohort study using a large geographically diverse U.S. health care claims data base shows that there is 2.8 fold increase in pancreatitis for T2 DM compared to non diabetes.) The increasing incidence of pancreatitis could be possibly related to global increase in diabetes.

Time and again drugs used to treat diabetes had been related to causing pancreatitis but never proven. Exenatide popularly known as byetta, an incretin mimetic injectable drug approved for use in T2 diabetes in 2005 by FDA later got into serious trouble with spontaneous reports of pancreatitis and even deaths due to hemorrhagic pancreatitis.