Relationship between histologic score and pulmonary kinetics parameters of 18F-fluorodesoxiglicose in early acute lung injury

• Grant number: 13/12889-2
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: February 01, 2014
• End date: January 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Medicine - Surgery
• Principal Investigator: Luiz Fernando dos Reis Falcão
• Grantee: Luiz Fernando dos Reis Falcão
• Host Institution: Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated researchers: Marcos Francisco Vidal Melo ; Vera Luiza Capelozzi

Abstract

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is an inflammatory condition with high mortality worldwide in spite of the recent advances in therapy. In Brazil, mortality rate reaches up to 60% in patients with moderate and severe ARDS. Neutrophilic inflammation is a key process in the pathogenesis of ARDS and it can be quantified by positron emission tomography (PET) coupled with advanced image analysis (associated with tracer 2-Deoxy-2-[18F]-Fluoro-D-Glucose, 18F-FDG). Neutrophilic activation is predominantly responsible for the 18F-FDG uptake, so the intensity of 18F-FDG signal is dependent on both the number of lung neutrophils and their activation status. Local changes in 18F-FDG uptake are able to detect early signs of lung injury before significant parenchymal damage and regional dysfunction develops. Therefore, PET-18F-FDG has been proposed as a powerful tool to study the early phase of neutrophil activation. Based on such arguments, it would be interesting to investigate the association between 18F-FDG kinetics parameters and the amount of neutrophil infiltration, their activation status and ultrastructural tissue damage. In this project, we propose to study the 18F-FDG kinetics in experimental models of lung injury and to determine its relationship with both intracellular changes in activated neutrophils and ultrastructural alveolar injury. We hope to demonstrate there is significant correlation between regional 18F-FDG changes and histological injury score. With these results, we aim to reinforce the importance of pulmonary 18F-FDG kinetics as a marker of early inflammation with predictive value for lung injury. (AU)