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Blood glucose-lowering medications may increase risk for false positive results in cancer screenings
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Society of Nuclear Medicine's 57th Annual Meeting
Medications used to control blood glucose levels may skew the results of cancer screenings using positron emission tomography by increasing absorption in the gut of the imaging agent fluorodeoxyglucose, new data suggest.
According to the results, patients with diabetes taking oral hypoglycemic agents prior to being screened for cancer using PET showed abnormally high intestinal absorption of fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG), a sign that normally indicates a cancerous tumor.
“The use of certain medications can influence where and how much of the imaging agent is taken up by the body,” Kyle Hurtgen, certified nuclear medicine technologist at Saint Louis University Hospital, Mo., said in a press release.
The study was conducted at Saint Louis University Hospital using advanced PET/computed tomography. Researchers grouped 39 patients (29 men; mean age, 64.9 years) with known or suspected extra-abdominal cancer into 3 groups: patients with diabetes who had taken oral hypoglycemics prior to imaging; patients with diabetes who had not taken oral hypoglycemics; and patients without diabetes.
More than 60% of patients who had taken oral hypoglycemics were determined to have much higher bowel and intestinal uptake of 18F-FDG compared with patients in the other two groups (15.4% with no oral hypoglycemics; 0% with controls).
Bowel uptake in patients taking oral hypoglycemics was generally intense, diffuse and continuous along the colon; in patients not taking oral hypoglycemics, bowel uptake was less intense and less continuous along the colon.
These data prompt the careful evaluation of the use of blood glucose-lowering medications when imaging patients with diabetes. Determining the use of these medications and potentially discontinuing their use prior to imaging may improve diagnostic accuracy for patients with diabetes suspected of having colon or other bowel cancers, the researchers concluded.
“It is important for technologists to know the patient’s history and use that information to their advantage to help physicians detect cancer and provide the best possible treatment for diabetic patients,” Hurtgen said.
For more information:
- Hurtgen KM. Scientific Paper #2015. Presented at: Society of Nuclear Medicine’s 57th Annual Meeting; June 5-9, 2010; Salt Lake City, Utah.