Severity and type of lymphoma are associated with aortic 18-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) positron emission tomographic uptake assessed by FDG PET/CT imaging

Abstract

Abstract Introduction There is increasing evidence that metabolic disease burden in lymphoma influence patients' outcome.However, the impact of disease severity on cardiovascular system remains unknown. Purpose To assess whether lymphoma is associated with arterial inflammation by examining the relationship between disease metabolic burden and arterial fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) uptake. Methods Sixty-two patients (43 male, mean age 58±18 years) with Hodgkin (n=29) or non-Hodgkin lymphoma (n=33) before chemotherapy and two separate control groups of 14 and 16 healthy individuals for Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin population respectively, with similar age, sex and cardiovascular risk factors,underwent FDG position emission tomography (FDG-PET/CT) imaging.Disease severity was quantified by metabolic tumor volume (MTV) and total lesion glycolysis (TLG) corresponding to standard uptake values (SUV) ≥41% or ≥2.5 of maximum SUV within lymphoma regions, and aortic FDG uptake by target-to-background ratio (TBR). Serum high sensitivity-C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), white blood count (WBC), ratio of neutrophils to lymphocytes (N/L), albumin and lactic acid dehydrogenase (LDH) values were measured for patient group. Results MTV and TLG measurements correlated significantly with hs-CRP, WBC,N/L ratio,albumin and LDH table 1.Patients with non-Hodgkin or Hodgkin lymphoma had increased aortic TBR compared to controls (p=0.001 and p=0.023, respectively).Aortic TBR was higher in patients with stage III-IV disease compared to those with stage I-I (p=0.046).There were significant associations between aortic FDG uptake and MTV values, which remained significant after adjustment for confounders (β=0.353, p=0.001, adjusted R2=0.318 for MTV41%, β=0.442, p=0.001, adjusted R2=0.269 for MTV2.5), Figure 1. Conclusions Aortic wall FDG uptake is related with disease severity indicating a vascular effect of lymphoma, as well as a new potential role of molecular imaging in cardio-oncology for evaluating disease severity and its consequences to vascular beds with a single examination. Figure 1 Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding source: None