Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 13 pp 12921—12929
Relationship between the expression of oestrogen receptor and progesterone receptor and 18F-FDG uptake in endometrial cancer
- 1 Department of Nuclear Medicine, Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
- 2 Department of Ultrasound, Ren Ji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China
Received: October 4, 2019 Accepted: May 20, 2020 Published: July 8, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103352How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Wu et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Background: Progestogens have been widely used for the treatment of inoperable endometrial cancer or younger patients with endometrial cancer. Identifying markers that are predictive of a response to progestogens is critical for successful therapy. Molecular imaging with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (18F-FDG PET) can provide metabolic phenotypic information of many malignancies. We investigated whether estrogen receptor (ER)/progestogen receptor (PR) status is correlated with 18F-FDG uptake, and whether 18F-FDG PET/CT could be useful for predicting ER/PR status in endometrial cancer.
Results: Endometrial cancers in the ER-positive group had lower SUVmax than those in the ER-negative group (12.3 ± 6.2 vs. 19.9 ± 6.6, respectively; P = 0.003). Endometrial cancers in the PR-positive group also had lower SUVmax than those in the PR-negative group (12.4 ± 6.2 vs. 20.0 ± 6.9, respectively; P = 0.005). Multivariate analysis indicated that SUVmax and tumour differentiation grade were significantly associated with both ER and PR status (P = 0.027 and P = 0.044, respectively). ER expression was predicted with an accuracy of 74.2% when a SUVmax value of 15.3 was used as a cutoff point for analysis. Similarly, PR expression was predicted with an accuracy of 74.2%, when a SUVmax value of 15.95 was used as the threshold for analysis.
Conclusion: Higher 18F-FDG accumulation in endometrial cancers is correlated with negative ER/PR expression. 18F-FDG PET/CT may be used to predict the status of ER/PR and thus aid in optimal treatment decision in endometrial cancers.
Methods: We carried out a retrospective analysis on 62 endometrial cancer patients who underwent 18F-FDG PET/CT before radical treatment. The maximum of standardized uptake value (SUVmax) was calculated from the 18F-FDG accumulation of the primary tumor. The relationship between SUVmax and ER/PR status was analyzed.