IgG4-related disease and the current status of diagnostic approaches

IgG4-related disease is a newly recognized systemic disease characterized by involving a wide range of organs. It includes the pancreas, biliary tree, salivary glands, periorbital tissues, upper aerodigestive tract, retroperitoneum, mediastinum, aorta, soft tissue, skin, central nervous system, breast, kidneys, prostate, lungs and lymph nodes. The elevated serum titer of immunoglobulin G4 (IgG4), which is the least common (3 % to 6 %) of the 4 subclasses of IgG, is a special marker for IgG4-related disease. However, its entity is still unknown. This article reviewed the literature to learn the IgG4-related diseases and their current status of diagnostic approaches

Augmenting Large Language Model Translators via Translation Memories

Using translation memories (TMs) as prompts is a promising approach to in-context learning of machine translation models. In this work, we take a step towards prompting large language models (LLMs) with TMs and making them better translators. We find that the ability of LLMs to ``understand'' prompts is indeed helpful for making better use of TMs. Experiments show that the results of a pre-trained LLM translator can be greatly improved by using high-quality TM-based prompts. These results are even comparable to those of the state-of-the-art NMT systems which have access to large-scale in-domain bilingual data and are well tuned on the downstream tasks.Comment: Accepted to Findings of ACL 202

The impact of FinTech start-ups on incumbent retail banks’ share prices

Background: This study aims to clarify the role of FinTech digital banking start-ups in the financial industry. We examine the impact of the funding of such start-ups on the stock returns of 47 incumbent US retail banks for 2010 to 2016. Methods: To capture the importance of FinTech start-ups, we use data on both the dollar-volume of funding and number of deals. We relate these to the stock returns with panel data regression methods. Results: Our results indicate a positive relationship exists between the growth in FinTech funding or deals and the contemporaneous stock returns of incumbent retail banks. Conclusions: Although these results suggest complementarity between FinTech and traditional banking, we note that our results at the banking industry level are not statistically significant, and that the coefficient signs for about one-third of the banks are negative, but not statistically significant. Since the FinTech industry is young and our sample period short, we cannot rule out that our findings are spurious

Performance characteristics of 18F–fluorodeoxyglucose in non-infected hip replacement

PurposeThe aim of this study was to retrospectively analyze 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomography (PET)/ computed tomography (CT) images of non-infected hip arthroplasty patients and summarize findings that may be useful for clinical practice.Methods18F-FDG PET/CT images of non-infected hip arthroplasty patients were collected from September 2009 to August 2021. The region of interest was independently delineated by two physicians and maximum standardized uptake values (SUVmax) were recorded and compared. Serologic data were also collected and the correlation between SUVmax and serologic parameters was analyzed, while the images were classified based on the 18F-FDG uptake pattern in the images using the diagnostic criteria proposed by Reinartz et al. (9). The interval between hip replacement and PET/CT was classified by year and the characteristics of the two groups were compared. The images of patients who underwent PET/CT multiple times were analyzed dynamically.ResultsA total of 121 examinations were included; six patients underwent PET/CT twice and two patients had three scans. There were no significant correlations between SUVmax and serologic results. The interobserver agreement between the two physicians in the classification according to the criteria of Reinartz et al. (9) was 0.957 (P < 0.005). Although there was non-specific uptake in cases with an arthroplasty-to-PET/CT interval this was non-significant. Additionally, 18F-FDG showed potential utility for dynamic observation of the condition of the hip.ConclusionSUVmax provided information independent of serologic results, meanwhile 18F-FDG showed potential applicability to the dynamic monitoring of hip arthroplasty-related diseases. However, the presence of blood vessels and muscles affected image interpretation and the specificity of 18F-FDG was not optimal. A more specific radionuclide is needed to maximize the benefits of using PET/CT for the assessment of periprosthetic joint infection (PJI)

Emergence of Fatal PRRSV Variants: Unparalleled Outbreaks of Atypical PRRS in China and Molecular Dissection of the Unique Hallmark

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a severe viral disease in pigs, causing great economic losses worldwide each year. The causative agent of the disease, PRRS virus (PRRSV), is a member of the family Arteriviridae. Here we report our investigation of the unparalleled large-scale outbreaks of an originally unknown, but so-called “high fever” disease in China in 2006 with the essence of PRRS, which spread to more than 10 provinces (autonomous cities or regions) and affected over 2,000,000 pigs with about 400,000 fatal cases. Different from the typical PRRS, numerous adult sows were also infected by the “high fever” disease. This atypical PRRS pandemic was initially identified as a hog cholera-like disease manifesting neurological symptoms (e.g., shivering), high fever (40–42°C), erythematous blanching rash, etc. Autopsies combined with immunological analyses clearly showed that multiple organs were infected by highly pathogenic PRRSVs with severe pathological changes observed. Whole-genome analysis of the isolated viruses revealed that these PRRSV isolates are grouped into Type II and are highly homologous to HB-1, a Chinese strain of PRRSV (96.5% nucleotide identity). More importantly, we observed a unique molecular hallmark in these viral isolates, namely a discontinuous deletion of 30 amino acids in nonstructural protein 2 (NSP2). Taken together, this is the first comprehensive report documenting the 2006 epidemic of atypical PRRS outbreak in China and identifying the 30 amino-acid deletion in NSP2, a novel determining factor for virulence which may be implicated in the high pathogenicity of PRRSV, and will stimulate further study by using the infectious cDNA clone technique