Relationship between reticuloendothelial systems' FDG uptake level and clinicopathological features in patient with invasive ductal breast cancer

Abstract

The reticuloendothelial system (RES) is a part of the immune system and plays a major role in the protection of against diseases. We thought that FDG-PET/CT may show the degree of systemic immune response induced with malignancy in the organs with the high RES activity. Our objective is to investigate FDG uptake levels of high RES activity organs (liver, spleen, bone marrow) in invasive ductal breast cancer and to evaluate the association with the clinicopathological features. In the present study, 193 patients with invasive ductal breast cancer who performed FDG-PET/CT were categorized according to the clinicopathological features including age, tumor size, axillary nodal status, histological grade, the presence of lymphavascular invasion, receptor status, Ki-67 proliferation index and biological subgroup. Also, a control group of 100 subjects were identified for comparison with breast cancer patients. We analyzed the relation of FDG uptake levels in high RES activity organs and clinicopathological features in patients. There was a statistically significant difference of SUVmax of the liver, spleen, and bone marrow between cancer and control groups (P < 0.0001). We found that high SUVmax in liver, spleen and bone marrow were significantly correlated with worse prognostic clinicopathological features in patient with invasive ductal breast cancer. FDG uptake level in high RES activity organs is associated with the presence of tumor, and also directly relating clinicopathological features for patients with invasive ductal breast cancer.