Acute pancreatitis after a course of clarithromycin.

We present a case of acute pancreatitis after a course of clarithromycin. An 84-year-old woman died of suspected pneumonia and cardiac failure. Autopsy surprisingly revealed acute pancreatitis. Except for the use of clarithromycin no other cause for her acute pancreatitis was obvious. Pancreatitis induced by clarithromycin has been reported twice in the English literature so far. There are, however, a few reports on acute pancreatitis associated with other macrolide antibiotics, such as erythromycin and roxithromycin.