The appropriate estimation of incurred but not reported (IBNR) reserves is traditionally one of the most important task for property and casualty actuaries. As certain claims are reported considerably later after their occurrence, the amount and appropriateness of the reserves have a substantial effect on the financial results of institutions. In recent years, stochastic reserving methods have become increasingly widespread, supported by broad actuarial literature, describing development models and evaluation techniques.
The cardinal aim of the present paper is to compare the appropriateness of several stochastic estimation methods, supposing different distributional underlying development models. For lack of analytical formulae in most of the model settings relevant from a practical perspective, due to the complex behavior of summed variables, simulations are performed to approximate distributions and results. Considering that the number of runoff triangles is generally limited, stochastically simulated scenarios contribute to feasible solutions. Stochastic reserving is taken into account as a stochastic forecast, thus comparison techniques developed for stochastic forecasts can be applied, opening up new informative perspectives beyond classical prediction measures, such as the mean square error of prediction.
Aim: To investigate the serum circulating DPP4 activity in patients with COVID-19 disease. Materials & methods: Serum samples from 102 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and 43 post-COVID-19 plasma donors and 39 SARS-CoV-2 naive controls and their medical data were used. Circulating DPP4 activities according to different COVID-19 disease peak severity (WHO) groups at sampling and at peak were assessed. Results: A significant decrease (p < 0.0001) in serum DPP4 activity was found in study groups of higher disease severity. When the circulating DPP4 activity was assessed as a prognostic marker, the logistic regression (p = 0.0023) indicated that the enzyme activity is a predictor of mortality (median 9.5 days before death) with receiver operating characteristic area under the curves of 73.33% (p[area = 0.5] <0.0001) as single predictor and 83.45% (p[area = 0.5] <0.0001) in combination with age among hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Conclusion: Decreased circulating DPP4 activity is associated with severe COVID-19 disease and is a strong prognostic biomarker of mortality.
When 14 "moderate" drinkers abstained from alcohol for four weeks, the activity of gamma-glutamyltransferase (GGT; EC 2.3.2.2) in their serum showed a large decrease. Immediately after the period of abstention, an orally given ethanol challenge of 1 g/kg produced a marked increase in serum GGT at 24 h, followed by a slow decline thereafter. Aspartate amino-transferase activity in serum was significantly increased at 24 h; however, alkaline phosphate, alanine aminotransferase, and lactate dehydrogenase showed much smaller or no changes. An abnormal increase in lactate dehydrogenase isoenzyme 5 was observed in seven subjects. In some of the moderate drinkers, liver biopsies showed mild chronic hepatitis or nonspecific changes. Eight nondrinking controls showed only slight increases in serum GGT following the same alcohol challenge; results for the other enzyme tests were unchanged. We consider it probable that pre-existing liver disease affects the response to ethanol, so that greater amounts of GGT are released from hepatic tissue; alternatively, drinkers may have a higher GGT activity in this tissue as a result of enzyme induction by ethanol. The alcohol challenge test was an effective discriminator between moderate drinkers and abstainers.
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