This is an international multicentre study aimed at evaluating the combined value of dopaminergic neuroimaging and clinical features in predicting future phenoconversion of idiopathic REM sleep behaviour (iRBD) subjects to overt synucleinopathy. Nine centres sent 123I-FP-CIT-SPECT data of 344 iRBD patients and 256 controls for centralized analysis. 123I-FP-CIT-SPECT images were semiquantified using DaTQUANTTM, obtaining putamen and caudate specific to non-displaceable binding ratios (SBRs). The following clinical variables were also analysed: (i) Movement Disorder Society-sponsored revision of the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale, motor section score; (ii) Mini-Mental State Examination score; (iii) constipation; and (iv) hyposmia. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was performed to estimate conversion risk. Hazard ratios for each variable were calculated with Cox regression. A generalized logistic regression model was applied to identify the best combination of risk factors. Bayesian classifier was used to identify the baseline features predicting phenoconversion to parkinsonism or dementia. After quality check of the data, 263 iRBD patients (67.6 ± 7.3 years, 229 males) and 243 control subjects (67.2 ± 10.1 years, 110 males) were analysed. Fifty-two (20%) patients developed a synucleinopathy after average follow-up of 2 years. The best combination of risk factors was putamen dopaminergic dysfunction of the most affected hemisphere on imaging, defined as the lower value between either putamina (P < 0.000001), constipation, (P < 0.000001) and age over 70 years (P = 0.0002). Combined features obtained from the generalized logistic regression achieved a hazard ratio of 5.71 (95% confidence interval 2.85–11.43). Bayesian classifier suggested that patients with higher Mini-Mental State Examination score and lower caudate SBR asymmetry were more likely to develop parkinsonism, while patients with the opposite pattern were more likely to develop dementia. This study shows that iRBD patients older than 70 with constipation and reduced nigro-putaminal dopaminergic function are at high risk of short-term phenoconversion to an overt synucleinopathy, providing an effective stratification approach for future neuroprotective trials. Moreover, we provide cut-off values for the significant predictors of phenoconversion to be used in single subjects.

The present translational study aimed to verify whether serial F-FDG PET/CT predicts doxorubicin cardiotoxicity. Fifteen athymic mice were treated intravenously with saline ( = 5) or with 5 or 7.5 mg of doxorubicin per kilogram ( = 5 each) and underwent dynamic small-animal PET beforehand and afterward to estimate left ventricular (LV) metabolic rate of glucose (MRGlu). Thereafter, we retrospectively identified 69 patients who had been successfully treated with a regimen of doxorubicin, bleomycin, vinblastine, and dacarbazine for Hodgkin disease (HD) and had undergone 4 consecutive F-FDG PET/CT scans. Volumes of interest were drawn on LV myocardium to quantify mean SUV. All patients were subsequently interviewed by telephone (median follow-up, 30 mo); 36 of them agreed to undergo electrocardiography and transthoracic echocardiography. In mice, LV MRGlu was 17.9 ± 4.4 nmol × min × g at baseline. Doxorubicin selectively and dose-dependently increased this value in the standard-dose (27.9 ± 9 nmol × min × g, < 0.05 vs. controls) and high-dose subgroups (37.2 ± 7.8 nmol × min × g, < 0.01 vs. controls, < 0.05 vs. standard-dose). In HD patients, LV SUV showed a progressive increase during doxorubicin treatment that persisted at follow-up. New-onset cardiac abnormalities appeared in 11 of 36 patients (31%). In these subjects, pretherapy LV SUV was markedly lower with respect to the remaining patients (1.53 ± 0.9 vs. 3.34 ± 2.54, respectively, < 0.01). Multivariate analysis confirmed the predictive value of baseline LV SUV for subsequent cardiac abnormalities. Doxorubicin dose-dependently increases LV MRGlu, particularly in the presence of low baselineF-FDG uptake. These results imply that low myocardial F-FDG uptake before the initiation of doxorubicin chemotherapy in HD patients may predict the development of chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity, suggesting that prospective clinical trials are warranted to test this hypothesis.

Objective: To identify brain regions whose metabolic impairment contributes to dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) clinical core features expression and to assess the influence of severity of global cognitive impairment on the DLB hypometabolic pattern. Methods: Brain fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography and information on core features were available in 171 patients belonging to the imaging repository of the European DLB Consortium. Principal component analysis was applied to identify brain regions relevant to the local data variance. A linear regression model was applied to generate core-feature-specific patterns controlling for the main confounding variables (Mini-Mental State Examination [MMSE], age, education, gender, and center). Regression analysis to the locally normalized intensities was performed to generate an MMSE-sensitive map. Results: Parkinsonism negatively covaried with bilateral parietal, precuneus, and anterior cingulate metabolism; visual hallucinations (VH) with bilateral dorsolateral-frontal cortex, posterior cingulate, and parietal metabolism; and rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) with bilateral parieto-occipital cortex, precuneus, and ventrolateral-frontal View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com.