PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Zhu, Hongyun AU - Goris, Michael TI - Hematological and biochemical factors affecting brain metabolism measured with 18FDG PET DP - 2011 May 01 TA - Journal of Nuclear Medicine PG - 1278--1278 VI - 52 IP - supplement 1 4099 - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/52/supplement_1/1278.short 4100 - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/52/supplement_1/1278.full SO - J Nucl Med2011 May 01; 52 AB - 1278 Objectives An observation was made that the SUV values in the brain did vary significantly between patients. The goal was to find a number of metrics reflecting general health status and their influence on brain FDG uptake. Methods The study includes 180 FDG PET studies performed on 39 patients between 9/20/07 and 6/4/09 referred for malignancies. 169 of the studies were included while the others were excluded for incomplete data. The age distribution was 59.8±10.6. Hematological metrics included the RBC, lymphocytes and neutrophile(NT)counts, in addition to the HGB and CRP levels. The liver SUV was also used a normalizing metric. Results The brain SUV value in different regions of the brain correlated strongly (R>0.9 for frontal versus central, visual cortex and nuclei). The inter-study variability of the liver SUVs (16.6%) was much smaller than that of the brain (35%). In individual regressions between the metrics and the brain SUV, the significant and negative regressions are age, NT and CRP. The significant positive regressions are Hgb and RBC counts. In multiple regressions the metrics with a significant positive influence were Hgb and negative influence were age and NT. By taking only the highly correlating factors and eliminating the high inter-correlating ones (RBC versus Hgb) by multiple regression we obtain significance for age(p=0.0007) NT(p=0.07), Hgb (p=1.55x10-6). Conclusions Anemia is correlated with lower brain SUV values, as is inflammation is correlated with lower SUV values. If this reflects on brain function, then one need to explore if patient with no specific brain disease, but lower cognitive function, could be better served by looking at “unrelated” factors of general health