TLR4 and acute pancreatitis: 2012). Artesunate significantly increased the survival of severe acute pancreatitis (SAP) rats, improved pancreatic pathology while decreasing serum amylase, lipase activities and pancreatic IL-6 and IL-1β levels. Another study demonstrated that the protective effect of artesunate against pancreatic injury was associated with the inhibition of the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4)/NF-κB signalling pathway, thus reducing the release of proinflammatory cytokines (Cen et al. 2016).