European guideline on IgG4-related digestive disease – UEG and SGF evidence-based recommendations

The overall objective of these guidelines is to provide evidence-based recommendations for the diagnosis and management of immunoglobulin G4 (IgG4)-related digestive disease in adults and children. IgG4-related digestive disease can be diagnosed only with a comprehensive work-up that includes histology, organ morphology at imaging, serology, search for other organ involvement, and response to glucocorticoid treatment. Indications for treatment are symptomatic patients with obstructive jaundice, abdominal pain, posterior pancreatic pain, and involvement of extra-pancreatic digestive organs, including IgG4-related cholangitis. Treatment with glucocorticoids should be weight-based and initiated at a dose of 0.6–0.8 mg/kg body weight/day orally (typical starting dose 30-40 mg/day prednisone equivalent) for 1 month to induce remission and then be tapered within two additional months. Response to initial treatment should be assessed at week 2–4 with clinical, biochemical and morphological markers. Maintenance treatment with glucocorticoids should be considered in multi-organ disease or history of relapse. If there is no change in disease activity and burden within 3 months, the diagnosis should be reconsidered. If the disease relapsed during the 3 months of treatment, immunosuppressive drugs should be added

Type 1 Autoimmune Pancreatitis in Europe: Clinical Profile and Response to Treatment.

Background and aimsAutoimmune pancreatitis (AIP) is an immune-mediated disease of the pancreas with distinct pathophysiology and manifestations. Our aims were to characterize type 1 AIP in a large pan-European cohort and study the effectiveness of current treatment regimens.MethodsWe retrospectively analyzed adults diagnosed since 2005 with type 1 or not-otherwise-specified AIP in 42 European university hospitals. Type 1 AIP was uniformly diagnosed using specific diagnostic criteria. Patients with type 2 AIP and those who had undergone pancreatic surgery were excluded. The primary endpoint was complete remission, defined as the absence of clinical symptoms and resolution of the index radiological pancreatic abnormalities attributed to AIP.ResultsWe included 735 individuals with AIP (69% male; median age 57 years; 85% White). Steroid treatment was started in 634 patients, of whom 9 (1%) were lost to follow-up. The remaining 625 had a 79% (496/625) complete, 18% (111/625) partial, and 97% (607/625) cumulative remission rate, while 3% (18/625) did not achieve remission. No treatment was given in 95 patients, who had a 61% complete (58/95), 19% partial (18/95), and 80% cumulative (76/95) spontaneous remission rate. Higher (≥0.4 mg/kg/day) corticosteroid doses were no more effective than lower ( 2 weeks (OR 0.908; 95%CI 0.818-1.009). Elevated IgG4 levels were independently associated with a decreased chance of complete remission (OR 0.639; 95%CI 0.427-0.955). Relapse occurred in 30% of patients. Relapses within 6 months of remission induction were independent of the steroid tapering duration, induction treatment duration, and total cumulative dose.ConclusionPatients with type 1 AIP and elevated IgG4 level may need closer monitoring. For remission induction, a starting dose of 0.4 mg/kg/day for 2 weeks followed by a short taper period seems effective. This study provides no evidence to support more aggressive regimens

Manufacturing Capability Inference and Supplier Classification Based on a Formal Thesaurus

Part 2: Sustainable Supply ChainsInternational audienceStandard representation of manufacturing capability information is a necessity for efficient configuration of loosely-coupled supply chains. ManuTerms is a formal thesaurus that provides a set of standard vocabulary that can be used for description of manufacturing capabilities. In this paper, a method is proposed for supplier characterization and classification guided by ManuTerms. The tools developed in this work use the capability narrative of manufacturing suppliers as the input and extract key concepts that refer to certain aspects of manufacturing capabilities in order to characterize and classify manufacturing suppliers. Through an experimental study, the supplier classification method was validated with respect to the level of agreement with human judgment