Background: The purpose of this prospective study was to evaluate the role of 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) for assessing treatment response in patients with pulmonary multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB).
Methods: The study subjects were four patients diagnosed with pulmonary MDR-TB who underwent MDR-TB treatment and serial 18F-FDG PET/CT at baseline and 6 and 12 months after treatment. The highest lung maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax), average SUVmean (average of all hypermetabolic parenchymal lesions), total metabolic lung volume (TMLV, sum of metabolic volumes from the hypermetabolic parenchymal lesions), and total lung glycolysis (TLG, sum of lesion glycolysis from the hypermetabolic parenchymal lesions) were determined as representative quantitative PET parameters for each patient.
Results: All patients except one had negative sputum culture conversion after one month of treatment and achieved successful treatment outcomes. Baseline TMLV and TLG PET parameters were much higher in the single patient with treatment failure than in the remaining three patients with treatment success. No other PET parameters at baseline or follow-up were associated with the treatment results.
Conclusions: Pretreatment volume-based 18F-FDG PET/CT lung parameters were associated with the final therapeutic response in patients with pulmonary MDR-TB. Our preliminary results warrant a larger study.
Keywords: 18F-FDG; Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis; PET/CT; Pulmonary tuberculosis; Therapeutic response.