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Assessment of cerebral glucose metabolism in patients with heart failure by 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging

  • ORIGINAL ARTICLE
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Journal of Nuclear Cardiology Aims and scope

Abstract

Background

To evaluate the cerebral metabolism in patients with heart failure (HF).

Methods

One hundred and two HF patients were prospectively enrolled, who underwent gated 99mTc-sestamibi single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)/CT, cardiac and cerebral 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomography (PET)/CT. Fifteen healthy volunteers served as controls. Patients were stratified by extent of hibernating myocardium (HM) and left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) into 4 groups where Group1: HM < 10% (n = 33); Group2: HM ≥ 10%, LVEF < 25% (n = 34); Group3: HM ≥ 10%, 25% ≤ LVEF ≤ 40% (n = 16) and Group 4: LVEF > 40% (n = 19). The standardized uptake value (SUV) in the whole brain (SUVwhole-brain) and the SUV ratios (SUVR) in 24 cognition-related brain regions were determined. SUVwhole-brain and SUVRs were compared between the 4 patient groups and the healthy controls.

Results

SUVwhole-brain (r = 0.245, P = 0.013) and SUVRs in frontal areas, hippocampus, and para-hippocampus (r: 0.213 to 0.308, all P < 0.05) were correlated with HM. SUVwhole-brain differed between four patient groups and the healthy volunteers (P = 0.016) and SUVwhole-brain in Group 1 was lower than that in healthy volunteers (P < 0.05). SUVRs of Group 3 in frontal areas were the highest among four patient subgroups (P < 0.05).

Conclusions

Cerebral metabolism in the whole brain was reduced but maintained in cognition-related frontal areas in HF patients with HM and moderately impaired global left ventricular function.

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Abbreviations

HF:

Heart failure

PET:

Positron emission tomography

CT:

Computed tomography

HM:

Hibernating myocardium (extent)

SUV:

Standardized uptake value

SUVR:

SUV normalized for SUV of cerebellum

BMI:

Body mass index

MNI:

Montreal Neurological Institute

AAL:

Automated anatomical labeling

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Acknowledgement

Michael C. Kreissl, Division of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany for the advice on the manuscript.

Disclosures

The authors declare they have no conflict of interest.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Mingkai Yun and Binbin Nie shared first-authorship

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Laboratory for Molecular Imaging, Beijing Anzhen Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China

    Mingkai Yun PhD, Wanwan Wen, Ziwei Zhu, Yongxiang Wei MD, PhD, Xiang Li MD, PhD & Xiaoli Zhang MD, PhD

  2. Beijing Key Laboratory of Upper Airway Dysfunction and Related Cardiovascular Diseases, Beijing, China

    Mingkai Yun PhD, Wanwan Wen, Ziwei Zhu, Shaoping Nie MD, PhD, Yongxiang Wei MD, PhD & Xiaoli Zhang MD, PhD

  3. Division of Nuclear Technology and Applications, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Binbin Nie PhD, Hua Liu PhD & Baoci Shan PhD

  4. Division of Emergency & Critical Care Centre, Department of Cardiology, Beijing Anzhen Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing, China

    Shaoping Nie MD, PhD

  5. Neuroimaging Labs (NIL), Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Rupert Lanzenberger PhD

  6. Division of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Biomedical Imaging and Image-guided Therapy, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Marcus Hacker MD & Xiang Li MD, PhD

  7. Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Heinrich R. Schelbert MD, PhD

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  1. Mingkai Yun PhD
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Correspondence to Xiaoli Zhang MD, PhD.

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Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (81871377, 81571717) and Beijing Municipal Science & Technology Comission (Z1 81100001718071).

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Yun, M., Nie, B., Wen, W. et al. Assessment of cerebral glucose metabolism in patients with heart failure by 18F-FDG PET/CT imaging. J. Nucl. Cardiol. 29, 476–488 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12350-020-02258-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12350-020-02258-2

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