Future Diagnostic Agents

Timely and specific diagnosis of infectious diseases can be clinically challenging but essential for the patient's outcome. Laboratory tests, such as a blood culture or urine specimen, can detect the responsible micro-organism but cannot discriminate between sterile inflammatory disease and tru...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Seminars in nuclear medicine 2009, Vol.39 (1), p.11-26
Main Authors: Gemmel, Filip, MD, Dumarey, Nicolas, MD, Welling, Mick, PhD
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Anti-Infective Agents
Antibodies
Bacterial Infections - diagnosis
Bacterial Infections - diagnostic imaging
Cytokines
Fluorodeoxyglucose F18
Fungi - immunology
Humans
Immunoglobulin Fragments
Infection - diagnosis
Infection - diagnostic imaging
Inflammation - diagnostic imaging
Leukocytes - cytology
Leukocytes - diagnostic imaging
Radiology
Radionuclide Imaging - methods
Radiopharmaceuticals
Sensitivity and Specificity
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Timely and specific diagnosis of infectious diseases can be clinically challenging but essential for the patient's outcome. Laboratory tests, such as a blood culture or urine specimen, can detect the responsible micro-organism but cannot discriminate between sterile inflammatory disease and truly infectious disease. Imaging tests, like scintigraphic techniques, can pinpoint the infection in the body. There are a number of clinical scintigraphic tests from which to choose, and no single test is optimal for the various presentations of clinical infectious disease. The currently available radiopharmaceuticals often are not capable of distinguishing between sterile inflammation, and bacterial or fungal infections. Neutrophil-mediated processes, characteristic for both inflammatory and infectious processes, can be targeted in situ by radiolabeled leukocytes, antibodies or fragments, or even by cytokines and18 F-fluorodeoxyglucose. Unfortunately those techniques are not infection-specific markers, and ongoing research is in progress to tackle this problem. The most promising option in this respect is directly targeting bacteria or fungi with radiolabeled antibiotics or antimicrobial peptides. These theoretically highly infection-specific radiopharmaceuticals could be used for monitoring the success of antimicrobial therapy of infectious disease. Although results from preclinical experiments and pilot studies in patients are promising, radiolabeled anti-infective agents are not currently in routine clinical use and studies are continuing to prove their effectiveness for diagnostic imaging of infections in the future.
ISSN:0001-2998
1558-4623
DOI:10.1053/j.semnuclmed.2008.08.005