A new potentially promising concept in diagnosis of occult infection with help of PET-CT

Abstract

In the light of recent advances in radionuclide diagnostics of occult infectious states, it is clearly seen that positron emission tomography will have a part in routine work-up especially for critically ill patients in near future. For the purpose of further development of a specific agent that might be capable of detecting a living microorganism in occult focus inside the host organism, we come with a concept of probably a new radiopharmaceutical agent besides well-known fluorinated glucose, labelled leucocytes and gallium based radiopharmaceuticals. The aim of this opinion letter is to propose a specific agent for almost all bacteria and fungi genera not depending on host’s metabolism, thus letting differentiation of infection foci from host’s tissue. The discussion of this letter is mainly on the background of developing a compound for folate biosynthesis in bacteria and fungi which is a specific way of metabolization by the mentioned species which is provided by microbiological studies.