1.11　Prognosis

Overall，the prognosis of AlP is good.The 5-year survival rates for AIP patients were similar to those of the age-and sex-matched US population（Sah et al.2010）.Exocrine and endocrine functions in the pancreas might be recovered by steroids in the short-term（Nishimori et al.2006；Ko et al.2010），but the long-term preservation of these functions remains to be determined.A portion of AlP patients develop pancreatic calcification or CP（Maruyama et al.2013）.One remaining important issue is whether patients with AIP have an increased risk for pancreatic cancer（Hart et al.2014）.In the 2011 nationwide survey in Japan（Kanno et al.2015a），malignant tumors were found in 109 out of 923（11.8%）AIP patients during a mean follow-up period of 4.8 years，but only seven cases were pancreatic cancer（Kanno et al.2015a）.Gastric cancer（21 patients）and colorectal cancer（16 patients）were the most common malignant tumors.One explanation for the relatively high frequency of malignancy in AIP patients is that most AIP patients are middle-aged to elderly.Hirano et al.（2014）reported that cancer risk is not higher in AIP patients than in the general population.It was also suggested that Alp might have an aspect of paraneoplastic syndrome，because the incidence of cancer was increased within the first year after the diagnosis of AIP（Shiokawa et al.2013）.Obviously，long-term follow-up will be required to address this issue.

Acknowledgements Financial Supports:Supported in part by the Ministry of Health，Labour，and Welfare of Japan.(https://www.daowen.com)

Conflict of Interest:None declared.