Abstract
1560
Objectives: Over 600 million people regularly chewed betel quid though it is well investigated to be associated with oral, pharyngeal, and esophageal cancer. Unlike other abused substances, little research about betel quid dependence (BQD) inducing damage of the brain has studied in the past, especially with PET/CT. The primary object of this study was to identify the metabolic pattern of BQD individual’s brains using 18F-2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose-PET (18F-FDG-PET).
Methods: The study was approved by the institutional review board. A total of 42 individuals (16 BQD individuals and 26 healthy controls) who underwent brain 18F-FDG-PET were enrolled. The inclusion criteria is the patient who has consumed any type of betel or betel quid product per day for at least 6 months, and had the diagnosis of DSM-IV BQ-D. Process imaging and group comparisons were carried out with statistical parametric mapping 12 (SPM12) to identify a 18F-FDG-PET pattern, basic models design at a two-sample t-test. Characteristics of abnormal metabolism brain region quantified by xjView Matlab toolbox, we selected abnormal metabolism areas with a significance of p < 0.001 corrected for multiple comparisons, and extent threshold at 20, using BrainNet Viewer to draw a 3D brain map. Clinical data were analyzed by SPSS (IBM SPSS Statistics, Version 18.0).
Results: We found no significant change in clinical characteristics, but significantly reduced metabolism can be seen in the bilateral middle prefrontal cortex(mPFC). Furthermore, compared with healthy controls, hypermetabolism can be located in the cerebellum inferior, fusiform, cerebellum superior, parahippocampal, vermis, lingual, and thalamus.
Conclusions: In our study, we found that hypermetabolism in the cerebellum and thalamus, and hypometabolism in PFC. We figured out a glucose metabolic pattern of BQD individual’s brain which may be a metabolic pattern with PFC's hypometabolism as the core node. This finding may help us further understanding BQ's unique addiction mechanism, and guide the follow-up of BQ addiction treatment. Acknowledgement: This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Grant No.81801740.