In recent years, performance-based contracting (PBC) has emerged as an e¤ective means to manage relationships with suppliers who provide services for maintenances of high-valued products. It has been documented that PBC promotes improvement of product reliability, a key determinant of product performance and overall cost. However, nontrivial challenges exist in a typical supply chain where mult...

The extant literature on after-sales service support suggests an implicit consensus around the (Pareto) superiority of performance-based contracts (PBC) over traditional time-and-material contracts. However, when product technology is new, a setting in which the vendor possesses superior information on product reliability, there is compelling evidence to suggest that buyers prefer the tradition...

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to address the use of glucocorticoids in the comparatively special population of pure primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) patients who have high levels of immunoglobulin G (IgG) and transaminases but do not have PBC-autoimmune hepatitis overlap syndrome. Ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA) is now assumed to be the standard therapy for PBC patients. Howe...

GOALS The aim of this study was to assess the long-term outcome of primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) patients and to test the clinical value of various outcome models, such as the Mayo Risk Score (MRS), in a large single-center cohort in Germany. BACKGROUND PBC is a chronic autoimmune liver disease with a female gender predominance and a peak incidence in the fifth decade of life. PBC is charac...

Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO)-induced immunosuppression can be clinically beneficial for autoimmune diseases. Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is characterized by autoimmune lesions of intrahepatic bile duct epithelial cells that may lead to irreversible cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma. The present study assessed the expression and function of IDO in a cell culture model and in PBC pat...

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is an autoimmune liver disease characterized by autoantibodies reactive with the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex. A conformational epitope has been mapped to aa 91-227 within the inner lipoyl domain of the E2 subunit (pyruvate dehydrogenase complex E2 (PDC-E2)). We have used phage display to further localize this epitope. A random heptapeptide library was screened...

P rimary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is an autoimmune disease of the liver characterized by the presence of highly specific antimitochondrial antibodies with resulting immune-mediated injury of small intrahepatic bile ducts. Palmoplantar keratodermas (PPKs) are characterized by hyperkeratosis of the skin on the palms and soles. Multiple cases have been reported associating PPK with autoimmune thyro...

Recently, there is ample evidence suggesting the important role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in autoimmune diseases via modulating B cells function. Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) is a progressive immune-mediated liver disease with unclear pathogenic mechanism. Whether the miRNA in peripheral B cells of PBC involve the mechanisms of pathology and progression is not known. The present study explores...

To extend the realm of application of the well known controller design technique of interconnection and damping assignment passivity–based control (IDA–PBC) of mechanical systems two modifications to the standard method are presented in this article. First, similarly to [1], it is proposed to avoid the splitting of the control action into energy–shaping and damping injection terms, but instead ...

A case of anti-mitochondrial antibody (AMA)-negative primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) associated with painless thyroiditis is reported in a 47-year-old woman who diagnosed as PBC based on her elevated serum gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase and immunoglobulin M levels, as well as histological findings of destroyed bile ducts surrounded by mononuclear infiltrates in the biopsied liver. She was negati...