Autoimmune pancreatitis:report of two cases and literature review

BACKGROUND: Autoimmune pancreatitis (All?) is a unique chronic inflammation of the pancreas in which autoimmune mechanisms are involved in the pathogenesis. It is characterized by clinical, histopathological, radiographic, serologic and therapeutic features. Since it was first described in 1995, increasing numbers of AIP patients have been diagnosed. METHODS: In this study, the data from 2 patients with AIP who had elevation of serum immunoglobulin G, positive autoantibody, swelling of the pancreas and narrowing of the main pancreatic duct on imaging were analyzed retrospectively. RESULTS: With the initial diagnosis of AIP, both patients underwent regular prednisone therapy, which was initiated at a dose of 40 mg per day with a tapering schedule of 5 mg every 2 weeks. The patients responded very well to treatment with prednisone. CONCLUSIONS: AIP is a relatively new disease entity. Although it is diagnosed by distinct characteristics of the clinical, radiologic, histopathologic, and serologic findings, many questions require further clarification, including its relationship to other autoimmune diseases and misdiagnosis as pancreaticobiliary malignancies.

An adaptive fuzzy design for fault-tolerant control of MIMO nonlinear uncertain systems

This paper presents a novel control method for accommodating actuator faults in a class of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) nonlinear uncertain systems.The designed control scheme can tolerate both the time-varying lock-in-place and loss of effectiveness actuator faults.In each subsystem of the considered MIMO system,the controller is obtained from a backstepping procedure;an adaptive fuzzy approximator with minimal learning parameterization is employed to approximate the package of unknown nonlinear functions in each design step.Additional control effort is taken to deal with the approximation error and external disturbance together.It is proven that the closed-loop stability and desired tracking performance can be guaranteed by the proposed control scheme.An example is used to show the effectiveness of the designed controller.

Prognostic impact of metastatic lymph node ratio on gastric cancer after curative distal gastrectomy

AIM:To investigate the prognostic impact of metastatic lymph node ratio(rN) on gastric cancer after curative distal gastrectomy.METHODS:A total of 634 gastric cancer patients who underwent curative resection(R0) of lymph nodes at distal gastrectomy in 1995-2004.Correlations between positive nodes and retrieved nodes,between rN and retrieved nodes,and between rN and negative lymph node(LN) count were analyzed respectively.Prognostic factors were identif ied by univariate and multivariate analyses.Staging accuracy of the pN category(5th UICC/TNM system) and the rN category was compared according to the survival rates of patients.A linear regression model was used to identify the relation between rN and 5-year survival rate of the patients.RESULTS:The number of dissected LNs was related with metastatic LNs but not related with rN.Cox regression analysis showed that depth of invasion,pN and rN category were the independent predictors of survival(P < 0.05).There was a signif icant difference in survival between LN stages classif ied by the rN category or by the pN category(P < 0.05).However,no signif icant difference was found in survival rate between LN stages classif ied by the pN category or by the rN category(P > 0.05).Linear regression model showed a signif icant linear correlation between rN and the 5-year survival rate of gastric cancer patients(β = 0.862,P < 0.001).Pearson's correlation test revealed that negative LN count was negatively correlated with rN(P < 0.001).CONCLUSION:rN category is a better prognostic tool than the 5th UICC pN category for gastric cancer patients after curative distal gastrectomy.Increased negative LN count can reduce rN and improve the survival rate of gastric cancer patients.