PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Pourhassan Shamchi, Sara
AU  - Gholami, Saeid
AU  - Houshmand, Sina
AU  - Werner, Thomas
AU  - Silverman, Randee
AU  - Kenney, Thomas
AU  - Alavi, Abass
AU  - Tebas, Pablo
TI  - Effect of Cocaine Abuse on Baseline Lung FDG uptake in Patients Receiving Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy
DP  - 2016 May 01
TA  - Journal of Nuclear Medicine
PG  - 1732--1732
VI  - 57
IP  - supplement 2
4099  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/57/supplement_2/1732.short
4100  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/57/supplement_2/1732.full
SO  - J Nucl Med2016 May 01; 57
AB  - 1732Objectives Clinical studies have suggested that substance-abuse including cocaine abuse may adversely affect disease prognosis in HIV positive patients by increasing viral load, accelerating disease progression, and AIDS-related mortality even among patients adherent to antiretroviral therapy. Given the fact that FDG PET/CT is very sensitive to detect underlying infectious/inflammatory changes, we have examined the effect of cocaine abuse on the baseline lung FDG uptake in well-controlled HIV positive patients under antiretroviral therapy.Methods A prospective study has been performed and HIV positive patients with and without cocaine abuse receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) with adequate viral load control (<200 copies/ml) were included. Lung fields were selected manually using placement of ROIs (regions of interest) over the bilateral lung parenchyma. Using these ROIs, SUV max and SUVmean for the whole lungs were calculated using Osirix software.Results 18 patients with current cocaine abuse and 17 control patients without cocaine abuse were included. The mean age of the patients with cocaine abuse was 47.0±9.3 years compared to 49.4± 5.5 for patients without cocaine abuse (p=0.36). There was 14 males (78%) among cocaine abusers as opposed to 13 males among controls (76%)(p=0.93). Mean lung SUVmax was 1.08±0.22 for cocaine abusers compared to 1.04±0.26 among controls (p=0.52). Mean SUVmean was 0.43±0.12 and 0.41± 0.15 for cocaine abusers and controls, respectively (p=0.62). No significant correlation was also observed between lung FDG uptake and patients’ CD4 or CD8 counts.Conclusions Based on these findings, cocaine abuse does not affect the lung FDG uptake in patients with well-controlled HIV infection with HAART therapy.