Does diabetes affect [(18)F]FDG standardised uptake values in lung cancer?

Area of Science:

• Nuclear Medicine
• Oncology
• Endocrinology

Background:

• Hyperglycaemia is known to decrease 2-[(18)F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose (FDG) uptake in tumors during positron emission tomography (PET) imaging.
• Existing data primarily focus on non-diabetic patients experiencing acute hyperglycaemia.
• The impact of diabetes mellitus (DM) on tumor FDG uptake remains less understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare FDG uptake in lung tumors between diabetic (DM) and non-diabetic (non-DM) patients.
• To investigate the influence of varying blood glucose levels in diabetic patients on tumor FDG uptake.

Main Methods:

• Retrospective analysis comparing 40 DM patients with 145 non-DM patients diagnosed with primary lung malignancies.
• Calculation of peak standardized uptake values (SUVs) for lung lesions without glucose correction.
• Comparison of myocardial SUVs between diabetic and non-diabetic patient groups.

Main Results:

• No significant difference in mean tumor SUVs was observed between DM patients (5.86+/-3.97) and non-DM patients (6.47+/-4.61).
• Tumor SUVs in DM patients did not differ significantly between those with blood glucose <7 mmol/l (5.91+/-3.98) and those with blood glucose >7 mmol/l (5.68+/-4.09).
• Myocardial SUVs were also comparable between DM patients (3.28+/-2.75) and non-DM patients (3.30+/-2.24).

Conclusions:

• FDG uptake in lung tumors is not significantly affected by blood glucose levels in diabetic patients with reasonably well-controlled diabetes.
• The findings suggest that standard PET/CT imaging protocols using FDG can be reliably applied to diabetic patients with controlled blood glucose.