PURPOSE We investigated the relation between carotid artery FDG uptake and cardiovascular risk based on the Framingham risk score (FRS) and evaluated the possible role of FDG uptake in terms of risk stratification of asymptomatic adults. METHODS We evaluated 290 adults who underwent FDG PET/CT as part of general health screens. We calculated target-to-background ratios, corrected for pre-scan...

BACKGROUND Shift of myocardial substrate preference has been observed in many chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart failure. This study was undertaken to elucidate the mechanisms underlying the chronic substrate switch in adult hearts and to determine the functional consequences of the switch. METHODS AND RESULTS Transgenic mice with cardiac-specific overexpression of the insulin-indepe...

UNLABELLED Impaired catecholamine handling in the viable infarct border zone may play an important role in ventricular remodeling and lethal arrhythmia. We sought to get further biologic insights into cardiac sympathetic neuronal pathology after myocardial infarction, using multiple tomographic imaging techniques. METHODS In a porcine model of myocardial infarction (n = 13), PET and MR imagin...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between hepatic triglyceride content and both myocardial function and metabolism in type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). BACKGROUND Heart disease is the leading cause of mortality in T2DM. Central obesity and hepatic steatosis, both hallmark abnormalities in T2DM, have been related to increased risk of heart disease. METHO...

A 67 years old woman was referred to nuclear medicine center for myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) for assessment of ischemic heart dieses (IHD).She had a history of atypical chest pain and dyspnea since about 10 days before admission. The MPI SPECT/CT was performed by stress/redistribution Tl-201 protocol. MPI was interpreted as relatively good coronary flow with no appreciable stress induced...

Right heart failure (RHF) is characterized by chamber-specific reductions of myocardial norepinephrine (NE) reuptake, beta-receptor density, and profiles of cardiac sympathetic nerve ending neurotransmitters. To study the functional linkage between NE uptake and the pre- and postsynaptic changes, we administered desipramine (225 mg/day), a NE uptake inhibitor, to dogs with RHF produced by tricu...

A discrete MIBI avid lung lesion was found in cinematic views of myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) of a 59 year-old woman. Interestingly, the abnormal uptake in the lung was detectable only in the rest phase images and not in the images acquired in the stress phase. MPI was performed for pre-operation cardiac risk assessment before correction surgery for spinal canal stenosis.  She had no...

Introduction: Left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) is considered to be the single most important prognostic factor in patients with previous myocardial infarction. LVEF is not improved in all patients after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). This study aimed to assess the possibility of prediction of LVEF changes after CABG using myocardial perfusion gated signle photon emission compu...

UNLABELLED Catecholamine regulates myocardial glucose use. However, the effect of inhaled anesthetics on myocardial glucose transport stimulated by catecholamine is unclear. We studied the effect of halothane and sevoflurane on uptake of 2-deoxyglucose stimulated by norepinephrine in neonatal cardiomyocytes and the mechanism that modulates glucose transport. We studied the effects of halothane ...