oa “From Qatar to the World” Abstracts Presented at International Conferences lor Published in Medical Journals

Aim: To assess the exocrine pancreatic function among cystic fibrosis patients with cystic fibrosis trans-membrane conductance regulator (CFTR) 11234V mutation. METHODS: Cross-sectional study of 40 cystic fibrosis patients with homozygous CFTR 11234V mutation belonging to a large Arab kindred family and 25 healthy subjects as a control group over a period of 12 mo. Assessment of their exocrine pancreatic function was performed by measuring faecal elastase-1 (FE1) concentration with a commercial ELISA kit using polyclonal antibodies (BioServ Diagnostics) in CF patients compared to healthy subjects. The results were compared with those obtained from a second laboratory using another commercial ELISA (ScheBo; Biotech, Germany) that uses two monoclonal antibodies against different specific epitopes of human pancreatic elastase. RESULTS: All CF patients with CFTR 11234V mutation had normal levels of faecal elastase 1. No significant difference was found between the two methods for the CF groups or between the CF patients with and without pancreatic enzyme replacement.