SPARC and familial pancreatic carcinoma: In the current study, we detected the methylation levels and methylation pattern of the SPARC gene transcriptional regulation region (TRR) in normal, adjacent normal, chronic pancreatitis, and pancreatic cancer tissues to assess the altered methylation levels of the SPARC gene to determine if SPARC methylation can be used as a tumorigenesis marker for the early detection of pancreatic cancer.