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CLINICAL INVESTIGATIONS |
Departments of Nuclear Medicine, Surgery, and Pathology, University of Ulm, Ulm, Germany
| ABSTRACT |
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Key Words: proliferative activity FDG uptake pancreatitis pancreatic cancer
| INTRODUCTION |
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Benign and malignant pancreatic diseases have many gross pathologic findings in common. Enlargement of the pancreatic head, ductal dilatation, cyst formation, infiltration, and ascites can occur with either disease (3). For this reason, morphologic criteria such as the findings of sonography, CT, MRI, or endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography are often less effective for differentiation between malignant and benign pancreatic tumors.
PET using the glucose analog 18F-FDG is a noninvasive imaging technique for tissue characterization based on metabolic differences between benign and malignant tumors. High accuracy in the detection of pancreatic cancer and reliable differentiation between cancer and chronic pancreatitis has been found for FDG PET in several studies, but false-positive findings can occur, especially when acute inflammation is present (47). Furthermore, increased expression of glucose transporter-1 gene (glut-1) has been shown in surgically obtained pancreatic cancer specimens (8). However, whether the elevation of glut-1 levels is independent of cancer cell proliferation or reflects a generally increased consumption of substrates associated with proliferating cells has remained unclear. This prospective study was performed to examine whether FDG uptake reflects proliferative activity in human pancreatic tumors.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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The series comprised 8 patients with stage I pancreatic carcinoma, 2 with stage II, 11 with stage III, and 2 with stage IV. All patients with benign tumors had chronic active pancreatitis (CAP). One patient had grade B CAP, 2 patients had grade C, and 6 patients had grade D.
Immunostaining
A standard peroxidase-conjugated streptavidinbiotin complex method (DAKO Diagnostika, Hamburg, Germany) was used; diaminobenzidine (Sigma-Aldrich, Deisenhofen, Germany) served as chromogen. Formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded sections (5 µm) of resected specimens from pancreatic cancer and chronic pancreatitis were dewaxed and rehydrated and then microwaved in 0.01 mol/L citrate buffer, pH 6.0, for 30 min. For immunostaining, MIB-1 antibody (Dianova, Hamburg, Germany), a monoclonal murine antibody specific for human nuclear antigen Ki-67, was used as the primary antibody in a 1:300 dilution. The sections were lightly counterstained with hematoxylin.
The primary antibody was omitted on sections used as negative controls. Sections obtained from lymph node tissue were included as positive controls for proliferating cells. A highly cellular area of the immunostained sections was evaluated. All epithelial cells with nuclear staining of any intensity were defined as positive. Approximately 600 nuclei were counted on each slide. Proliferative activity was assessed as the percentage of MIB-1stained nuclei in the sample.
Morphometry
Histopathologic slides were scored by one experienced reader. The fraction of stained nuclei per total nuclei was estimated by counting 600 nuclei per patient using the computer-assisted imaging system OPTIMAS 6.2 (Media Cybernetics, Inc., Silver Spring, MD). Slides were analyzed by light microscopy, and three representative images of each slide were transferred to the computer frame by a video camera connected to the frame-grabber driver. Images were enhanced with various filters to help identify features. The specified measurements were then extracted to the measurement set and exported to export destination (Excel; Microsoft, Redmond, WA) for analysis. Hematoxylin- and eosin-stained fractions were used to estimate the fraction of connective tissue and the fraction of inflammatory cells independently from estimation of the proliferative fraction.
FDG PET
PET was performed using an ECAT 931 08/12 scanner (Siemens Medical Systems, Inc., Hoffman Estates, IL/CTI, Knoxville, TN), which produces 15 contiguous slices per bed position. Axial field of view is 10.3 cm per bed position. Three bed positions were measured for each patient, covering a field of view of 31.5 cm. The emission scan included the liver and the pancreatic region for all patients. Patients fasted for at least 6 h before undergoing PET. Static emission scanning was performed 45 min after injection of 250300 MBq FDG. The acquisition time was 10 min per bed position. Before FDG administration, 8-min transmission scans with a 68Ge/68Ga ring source were obtained for attenuation correction. Patients were repositioned carefully using laser-guided landmarks to ensure an identical field of view for emission and transmission scanning. Images were reconstructed using an iterative reconstruction algorithm described by Schmidlin (9). The resolution for iterative reconstruction was 7 mm full width at half maximum at the center of the field of view.
Transaxial, coronal, and sagittal sections were documented in a hard copy in a standardized manner. All images were evaluated independently by two experienced readers. Both readers were unaware of the patients clinical status. For SUV calculation, circular regions of interest (area, 2 cm3) were drawn around the area with focally increased pancreatic FDG uptake. The regions of interest were approximately two times the minimum resolution of the PET scanner.
Data Analysis
Data are presented as mean, median, and SD. Blood glucose levels, number of Ki-67positive cells, and FDG SUV of patients with pancreatic cancer and CAP were compared using the Mann-Whitney U test. Differences were considered statistically significant when P was <0.05. Multivariate analysis was used to determine correlations between Ki-67positive cells, SUV, fibrous tissue, and inflammatory cells in the tumor-surrounding tissue.
| RESULTS |
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Inflammatory cells were detected in the tumor-surrounding tissue in 21 pancreatic cancer specimens. No inflammatory cells were present in 2 specimens. The mean fraction of inflammatory cells was 15%, and SD was 8.6%. In two patients with CAP, no inflammatory cells could be detected. The mean percentage of inflammatory cells in the tumor-surrounding tissue for benign lesions was 12.2%, and SD was 9.7%.
Approximately 50% of the tumor tissue within the cancer specimens consisted of stroma (SD, 16.9%). Fibrous tissue was present in all sections (range, 20%80%). In benign lesions, the mean volume fraction of fibrous tissue was 35% (SD, 20.7%). The minimum percentage was 10%, and the maximum was 60%.
Correlation Between Proliferative Activity and FDG Uptake
Intense immunoreactivity to Ki-67 antigen was present in pancreatic carcinomas with strongly increased FDG uptake as well as in those with low FDG uptake (Table 1). No significant correlation was found between Ki-67 immunoreactivity and FDG uptake (P = 0.65). Statistical analysis also showed no significant correlation between FDG uptake and the presence of inflammatory cells in tissue specimens (P = 0.47).
The low immunoreactivity to Ki-67 antigen in CAP suggested a possible correlation with focally increased FDG accumulation in the pancreas (P = 0.09; Table 2). No correlation was found between FDG uptake and the number of inflammatory cells (P = 0.44).
In pancreatic cancer, multivariate analysis showed a possible correlation between the number of fibrocytes and SUV (P = 0.06). In CAP, multivariate analysis showed no correlation between the number of fibrocytes and SUV (P = 0.48).
| DISCUSSION |
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Expression of glut-1 and membrane glucose transport is generally increased in pancreatic cancer but not in chronic pancreatitis (8). On the other hand, avid FDG uptake caused by increased glycolytic activity has been shown in inflammatory cells such as neutrophils and activated macrophages, which are present in areas of acute or chronic inflammation (12,13). Accordingly, FDG has been reported to accumulate in various inflammatory processes (14,15), including acute pancreatitis (16). Nevertheless, Kato et al. (17) showed a significantly higher FDG uptake in patients with pancreatic cancer than in those with mass-forming pancreatitis. False-positive findings were observed, however, in two of nine patients with scar tissue associated with leukocytic infiltration. Similar results have been reported for a larger series (11,18). To minimize false-positive PET findings, Diederichs et al. (11) recommended, therefore, that patients be excluded if their laboratory data show evidence of acute bouts of chronic pancreatitis.
Pancreatic FDG PET, being less sensitive for cancer detection in patients with elevated plasma glucose levels (6,19), is also affected by other metabolic conditions such as altered glucose metabolism. In our series, blood glucose level was >130 mg/dL in three patients with pancreatic cancer. FDG uptake might therefore be reduced in these patients.
Our results applied to a particular selection of patients with focally increased FDG uptake in the pancreas. Therefore, the accuracy of FDG PET in detecting pancreatic malignancies could not be evaluated. FDG uptake was similarly increased in CAP and in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (Fig. 1; Tables 1 and 2). Moreover, the pattern of FDG accumulation in CAP could not be visually discriminated from that in malignant lesions (Fig. 2). Our results indicate that FDG PET is of limited value for differentiating between pancreatic cancer and pancreatitis in patients with acute episodes of chronic pancreatitis. Differentiation between active inflammation and malignant tumors with FDG PET therefore remains problematic.
Our most important finding was that Ki-67 immunoreactivity enabled reliable differentiation between benign and malignant pancreatic tumors (Fig. 5). Ki-67 is a nuclear antigen expressed in the G1, G2, and S phases of the cell cycle but not in the G0 phase (20). Currently, Ki-67 is therefore an accepted marker for proliferative activity (21,22). In our study, the mean percentage of Ki-67positive cells was approximately tenfold higher in pancreatic cancer than in CAP, indicating that proliferative activity is elevated strongly in the former but only slightly in the latter. For pancreatic tumors, radiotracers such as 11C-thymidine or 18F-3'-deoxy-3'-fluorothymidine, which indicate proliferative activity (23), should be more suitable for differentiating between malignancies and inflammatory processes than are metabolic markers such as FDG.
Data on the correlation between proliferative activity and glycolysis in malignant tumors, as measured by FDG uptake, are controversial. Okada et al. (24) found a positive correlation between proliferation and FDG uptake in a small series of malignant lymphoma cases. By contrast, the in vitro results of Higashi et al. (25) indicated no correlation between proliferative activity and FDG uptake in human cancer cells. In agreement with this in vitro study, our pancreatic carcinoma study revealed no correlation between FDG uptake and proliferative activity.
| CONCLUSION |
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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For correspondence or reprints contact: Andreas C. Buck, MD, Department of Nuclear Medicine, University of Ulm, Robert-Koch-Strasse 8, D-89070 Ulm, Germany.
| REFERENCES |
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