Ricerc@Sapienza

Background: Infectious diseases are one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Nuclear molecular imaging would be of great help to non-invasively discriminate between septic and sterile inflammation through available radiopharmaceuticals, as none is currently available for clinical practice. Here, we describe the radiolabeling procedure and in vitro and in vivo studies of99mTc-polymyxin B sulfate (PMB) as a new single photon emission imaging agent for the characterization of infections due to Gram-negative bacteria.

There is an increased need to find non-invasive tools for early diagnosis and follow-up of infections. Nuclear medicine techniques may be used to diagnose, localize and evaluate the severity and the extent of infections before the occurrence of anatomical abnormalities. This review focuses on different approaches based on radiolabelled cells, peptides and antibodies or [ 18 F]FDG to image infective diseases in agreement with what is being jointly evaluated by the European Association of Nuclear Medicine (EANM).