Correlation of FDG-PET imaging with Glut-1 and Glut-3 expression in early-stage non-small cell lung cancer

Purpose: To correlate FDG activity on PET with the expression of glucose tr ansporter proteins Glut-1 and Glut-3 in patients with early stag non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods: Over a 5 year period, all patients with a PET scan and clinical stage I NSCLC underwent an immunohistochemical anal ysis of their tumor for Glut-1 and Glut-3 expression. The amount of FDG upt ake in the primary lesion was measured by a standardized uptake ratio (SUR) and correlated with immunohistochemical results. Results: Seventy-three pa tients with a mean age of 66 years had clinical stage I disease. The final pathologic stage showed 64 patients with stage IA/B disease, eight with sta ge IIA disease, and one patient with pathologic stage IIIA (T1N2) disease. Glut-1 transporter expression was significantly higher than Glut-3 (P < 0.0 001), and although there was some association between the SUR and Glut-1 (P = 0.085) and SUR and Glut-3 (P = 0.074) expression, this did not reach sta tistical significance. Conclusions: Glut-1 and Glut-3 transporter expressio n did not demonstrate a statistically significant correlation with FDG upta ke in potentially resectable lung cancer. It appears that these transporter s alone do not affect the variation in FDG activity in early stage NSCLC. ( C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.