PET/CT scans can detect major depression in cancer patients: Study

Written By : Medha Baranwal |Medically Reviewed By : Dr. Kamal Kant Kohli Published On 2021-05-14T07:42:29+05:30 | Updated On 14 May 2021 7:42 AM IST

USA: Whole-body FDG PET/CT scans can help in the detection of major depression in cancer patients, finds a recent study in the PLOS One. These findings suggest that in addition to staging and evaluating response to chemoradiation therapies, PET/CT images can help in screening for major depression in cancer patients.

Major depression is a common comorbidity in cancer patients -- 1 in 4 cancer patients experience major depression. Oncology clinics lack practical, objective tools for simultaneous evaluation of major depression and cancer. Fludeoxyglucose F-18 positron emission tomography-computed tomography (FDG PET/CT) is universally applied in modern medicine. Xiaofei Wang, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA, and colleagues aimed to explore predictive models to identify major depression cases from multiple myeloma patients.

For this purpose, they used a retrospective analysis of whole-body FDG PET/CT images to identify brain regional metabolic patterns of major depression in multiple myeloma patients. The study included 134 multiple myeloma (MM) patients, 38 with major depression (group 1) and 96 without major depression (group 2).

Key findings of the study include:

In the current study, Statistic Parameter Mapping (SPM) demonstrated that the major depression patient group (n = 38) had significant regional metabolic differences (clusters of continuous voxels) as compared to the non-major depression group (n = 96) with the criteria of height threshold, T = 4.38 and extent threshold > 100 voxels.
· The five significant hypo- and three hyper-metabolic clusters from the computed T contrast maps were localized on the glass-brain view, consistent with published brain metabolic changes in major depression patients.
· Using these clusters as features for classification learner, the fine tree and medium tree algorithms from 25 classification algorithms best fitted our data (accuracy 0.85%; AUC 0.88; sensitivity 79%; and specificity 88%).

"This study demonstrated that whole-body FDG PET/CT scans could provide added value for screening for major depression in cancer patients in addition to staging and evaluating response to chemoradiation therapies," wrote the authors.

Reference:

The study titled, "Resting-state brain metabolic fingerprinting clusters (biomarkers) and predictive models for major depression in multiple myeloma patients," is published in PLOS One.

DOI: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0251026#sec020

major depressioncancerPET CT

Source : PLOS One

Medha Baranwal

MSc. Biotechnology

Medha Baranwal joined Medical Dialogues as an Editor in 2018 for Speciality Medical Dialogues. She covers several medical specialties including Cardiac Sciences, Dentistry, Diabetes and Endo, Diagnostics, ENT, Gastroenterology, Neurosciences, and Radiology. She has completed her Bachelors in Biomedical Sciences from DU and then pursued Masters in Biotechnology from Amity University. She has a working experience of 5 years in the field of medical research writing, scientific writing, content writing, and content management. She can be contacted at editorial@medicaldialogues.in. Contact no. 011-43720751

Dr. Kamal Kant Kohli

Dr Kamal Kant Kohli-MBBS, DTCD- a chest specialist with more than 30 years of practice and a flair for writing clinical articles, Dr Kamal Kant Kohli joined Medical Dialogues as a Chief Editor of Medical News. Besides writing articles, as an editor, he proofreads and verifies all the medical content published on Medical Dialogues including those coming from journals, studies,medical conferences,guidelines etc. Email: drkohli@medicaldialogues.in. Contact no. 011-43720751