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Basic Science Investigations |
Klinik und Poliklinik für Nuklearmedizin der Universität Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
| ABSTRACT |
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Key Words: differentiated thyroid cancer radioiodine therapy recombinant human thyroid-stimulating hormone dosimetry stunning
| INTRODUCTION |
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The topic has been discussed in many publications (120). Some groups described an impact on the visibility of lesions in posttherapeutic scans (911,19), disregarding the fact that it depends on a variety of factors, such as
-camera sensitivity, time after radioiodine administration, or thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) level. Some authors focused on the effect of diagnostic activity on the results of posttherapeutic scanning (25) or on the remnant ablation dose (36). Others investigated the outcome, defined as the thyroid remnant ablation rate, showing different percentages of ablation failures (12,17,19). Hilditch et al. (20) showed that there is a reduced uptake of therapeutic radioiodine in the thyroid bed after the administration of 120 MBq of 131I for diagnostic scans compared with the results for a group of patients who received 123I for diagnostic scans.
To our knowledge, nobody has yet provided evidence that the impact of moderate doses really is temporary or has suggested a time frame for full regeneration. The underlying mechanisms at the cellular level are not fully understood, and it has not yet been proven whether the concern is temporary stunning or nonreversible destruction. However, care must be taken not to reduce the chances of success of radioiodine ablation treatments because of unconsidered dose reductions attributable to moderate pretherapeutic doses.
Participation in an international multicenter dosimetry study (21) and a follow-up study enabled us to investigate quantitative changes in thyroid iodine biokinetics after the administration of 74 MBq of 131I twice within 6 wk and an ablation activity of 34 GBq 712 d after the second diagnostic administration of 131I in 6 patients.
Originally, the first study was performed to determine the correction factor to be applied to the 131I activity for DTC remnant ablation therapy with recombinant human TSH (rhTSH) in euthyroid patients versus conventional subsequent hypothyroid conditions after thyroid hormone withdrawal (21). Because the findings of the study (21) showed evidence of reduced remnant residence times in hypothyroidism, we analyzed data for a subset of 5 patients investigated at our site in more detail. In addition, a further study was initiated with dose assessments in reverse order (conventional hypothyroid conditions versus euthyroid conditions first and rhTSH administration second).
The objectives of this work were to verify whether the reduced residence times were attributable to an effect of rhTSH and to quantify the potential contribution of stunning. Furthermore, the effect of the 2 preceding diagnostic procedures on the biokinetics of therapeutic 131I activities for thyroid remnants was analyzed.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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We had planned to enroll another 2 patients but, after finalizing the assessment of patient P6, we discontinued the second study for ethical reasons, as potentially insufficient ablation doses were expected.
A complete set of patient data, including demographics and data on TNM stage, rhTSH regimen, TSH and thyroglobulin levels, and study time intervals, is shown in Table 1. Five of the patients had more than 1 lesion after surgery.
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The
-camera used was a standard dual-head camera (Bodyscan; Siemens) equipped with a high-energy general-purpose collimator. The acquisition time was 300 s (128 x 128 matrix), with a 15% window centered on the 364-keV peak of 131I. The pixel size of the camera for a 128 x 128 matrix was 4 mm. For quality control purposes, a 133Ba source with an activity of 1.85 MBq was scanned together with the patient. Additionally, an acrylic calibration phantom (150 x 50 x 50 mm) containing 2 separate flat 131I sources (source diameter, 25 mm; source distance, 100 mm; thickness, <1 mm; attenuation layer on the top and on the bottom of the sources, 25 mm; activities, 1.85 and 5.55 MBq) was placed on the patient bed and scanned with the same parameters as the patient.
The geometric mean net counts were 5.8 counts of 131I per kilobecquerel in the lesion for a 5-min scan, corresponding to 430 net counts for an uptake of 0.1% in the diagnostic assessments.
Dosimetry
The computer code NUCLIDOSE (22) was used to draw regions of interest (ROIs) around the remnant and the sources and to copy them identically to subsequent images. Representative ROIs adjacent to the respective remnant regions were used for background correction. The counts used for the dosimetric calculations were the geometric means of anterior and posterior counts in the remnant regions corrected for the background counts per pixel as calculated from the background region.
Uptake was calculated by use of the camera efficiency obtained from the phantom measurements by taking into account the attenuation in the phantom. A transmission factor of 0.3 was applied to correct for the attenuation in the neck at an 11-cm neck thickness. Deviations from that "standard" neck thickness resulted in errors of 5% per centimeter only and were neglected.
The effective half-lives were evaluated by linear regression to the logarithms of the uptake values at nominal times 24 h after administration or later. The remnant residence times for the dosimetric assessments were calculated as the sum of the integrals of trapezoidal functions up to 24 h and the exponential decay function obtained from the regression after 24 h.
For therapeutic assessment, the 24-h uptake was determined by extrapolation of the deduced decay function. The residence time for the therapeutic course was calculated as the residence time of the first diagnostic course multiplied by the ratios of the therapeutic 24-h uptake to the 24-h uptake of the first diagnostic scan and the therapeutic half-life to the half-life of the first diagnostic scan.
To calculate the order of magnitude of the radiation doses applied to the thyroid remnants, it was necessary to estimate the remnant masses. At present, there is no validated method for determining the masses of thyroid remnants after surgery exactly. We adopted a previously described method (7,23) to estimate the mass from the number of pixels significantly above the background level in the scintigraphic image and the pixel size by assuming a mean thickness of the remnant of 2 mm. For determination of the number of pixels, a ROI was drawn around the lesion. A second ROI representing the background was drawn adjacent to the lesion ROI to determine the average background counts. From the lesion ROI, the number of pixels with the number of counts exceeding the maximum of either twice the background or the sum of the background plus 3 times the square root of the background was determined.
An analysis of the remnant regions for all patients and all time points for all scans showed systematically smaller lesion areas in the second dosimetric assessment. At only a few days after the second assessment, however, the lesion area values during therapy were almost identical to the values in the first assessment. Because this effect is not considered to be a real change in mass from course to course but may be dependent on specific lesion uptake and on the total amount of the administered activity, we decided to calculate the lesion mass values from the average of the lesion area values of the 48-h scans, which were the only scans obtained at identical time points for the 2 diagnostic courses and the therapy course.
The doses delivered to the lesions were calculated from the average mass values, the corresponding residence times, and the S factors, as published by the MIRD Committee of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (24).
The reductions in uptake, half-life, and residence time observed during the second diagnostic assessment and during the therapeutic assessment were calculated as the ratios of the values for those parameters during those assessments to the values during the first diagnostic assessment.
| RESULTS |
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Figure 2 shows the 24-h uptake, the effective half-life, and the residence time for the 11 lesions during the 2 diagnostic courses and during therapy. The dotted lines connect the data points for each lesion. The horizontal bars indicate the median for each data set.
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Patients P1, P3, P4, and P5 showed complete remission after ablation (thyroglobulin level, less than 0.2 ng/mL; no evidence of pathologic 131I uptake in subsequent diagnostic scans). Patients P2 and P6 had positive follow-up scans, with 290 MBq of 131I after 6 mo (uptake limited to the thyroid bed in lesions L1 and L2 in both patients was still visible), resulting in the need for a second course of therapy with 131I.
| DISCUSSION |
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The special design of the present study enabled us to show for the first time significant effects on both uptake and effective half-life in thyroid tissue 46 wk after a diagnostic scan in the absence of any impact of therapeutic activities on iodine kinetics. This means that at least up to 4 wk after the administration of a diagnostic activity even as low as 74 MBq, the dose delivered to a thyroid remnant for ablation therapy may be reduced. This time interval appears to be long for an acute transient effect of moderate doses. Furthermore, the reduction in residence time attributable to diagnostic activity was confirmed by the results of the iodine kinetic measurements obtained during therapy after the second diagnostic assessment.
The masses (shown in Table 3) and, as a consequence, the calculated absolute radiation doses must be considered less accurate than the uptake values and the corresponding effective half-lives. For patients with a mean remnant thickness exceeding the presumed value of 2 mm, masses are underestimated and doses are overestimated. If the mean remnant thickness is smaller, then the masses are smaller. The doses, however, are not correspondingly higher, because an increasing fraction of the dose is deposited outside the thyroid tissue, as the mean range of the radiation exceeds the dimensions of the residual tissue (26). Therefore, it is very unlikely that doses are significantly underestimated.
For one patient, a dose estimate as high as 38 Gy was found in the first diagnostic study. The mean dose for all patients after the first assessment was 15 Gy; after each further assessment, the dose was reduced according to the decrease in residence time. We suspect that reduced uptake values and half-lives are manifestations of permanent destruction of tissue and not of stunning.
In all likelihood, this effect will occur for any tissue of thyroid origin, although our results do not prove that the same results can be found for metastatic tissue. As a consequence, further studies are warranted to determine whether the administration of 131I for diagnostic applications degrades the probability of total ablation during subsequent radioiodine ablation therapy. A shortened time interval between diagnostic procedures and therapy may decrease the rate of stunning.
The sharp decrease in the residence times from course to course raises suspicion that, in particular, well-differentiated tissues are affected. This situation may result in potential negative selection of susceptible cells, possibly leading to dedifferentiation of benign thyroid or tumor tissue attributable to radiation damage during the course of the disease. There is proof, however, that in a mixed population of thyroid cells, there are a variety of levels of expression of the sodium iodide symporter, resulting in different radioiodine uptake levels in the same patient or lesion (2729).
As the study originally was set up to analyze the difference in therapeutic activities to be administered to euthyroid and hypothyroid patients after a diagnostic scan, we could not rule out a direct effect of the use of rhTSH after evaluation of the first 5 patients. These patients were scanned after the administration of rhTSH first and were withdrawn from thyroid hormones for the second course of diagnostic scanning. Therefore, for patient P6, the order was reversed (withdrawal first and rhTSH second). This patient (P6) showed the same trend as the other 5 patients, as shown in Table 2.
Originally, we had planned to enroll 3 patients in the reverse-order study. However, there seemed to be a very high probability that additional patients to be recruited would show the same unfavorable results, leading to potentially insufficient ablation doses; therefore, no further patients were included for ethical reasons.
With only 1 patient in the second study and with the observed high variability in the residence time reduction for the first group of patients (patients P1P5), it was not possible to deduce statistically significant differences between the studies. The effect of stunning is dominant and masks a potential influence of rhTSH on iodine kinetics. An ongoing multicenter trial comparing conventional ablation therapy to ablation therapy with rhTSH may provide further data on the influence of rhTSH on iodine kinetics.
| CONCLUSION |
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Alternatively, 123I could be used for investigations to rule out any radiation-induced effect because of its much lower radiation dose to thyroid tissue. A prospective study comparing diagnostic 123I scanning with rhTSH versus conventional 131I scintigraphy under hypothyroid conditions is under way.
| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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For correspondence or reprints contact: Michael Lassmann, PhD, Klinik und Poliklinik für Nuklearmedizin der Universität Würzburg, Josef-Schneider-Str. 2, D-97080 Würzburg, Germany.
E-mail: lassmann{at}nuklearmedizin.uni-wuerzburg.de
| REFERENCES |
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