Early increase in 6-[18F]FDF uptake in LPS-injected striatum
6-[18F]FDF started to accumulate slowly in brain parenchyma after the initial vasculature signal. Due to radiodefluorination of 6-[18F]FDF [36, 43], bone accumulation of the radioactivity also increased with time, resulting in significant spillover of radioactivity from the skull to adjacent cerebral and cerebellar cortices, with TACs increasing showing increased radioactivity uptake throughout the 120 min acquisition in the CNS (data not shown). Nevertheless, in subcortical areas such as striatum, thalamus and hippocampus, the TACs plateaued after 60 min of injection and remained stable at 0.8-1.0 SUV for the remainder of the acquisition (vide infra). In this proof-of-concept study, we focused on the striatum and hippocampus which had negligible skull spillover.
As shown in Fig. 1, increased 6-[18F]FDF uptake was observed in the LPS-injected right striatum versus the left side at 48 h of surgery in both male (Fig. 1A) and female (Fig. 1D) rats. At later time points of one-week (Fig. 1B, 1E), two-weeks (Fig. 1C, 1F), and one-month (male only, not shown), 6-[18F]FDF binding in the ipsilateral striatum was largely diminished. Two male rats were imaged at 24 h of LPS injection and also showed increased 6-[18F]FDF uptake in the ipsilateral striatum. Therefore, the early increase in 6-[18F]FDF uptake following LPS was in sharp contrast to that reported previously for our TSPO ligand [18F]FEPPA, which peaked at approximately one week post-LPS injection, and to that of the MAO-B ligand [11C]L-deprenyl, which developed after two weeks of LPS injection [42].
The results shown in Fig. 1 were supported by TAC analyses depicted in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3. Increased 6-[18F]FDF uptake (SUV, 60–120 min) in the ipsilateral striatum vs contralateral side was observed at 24 hours (male only, 0.867 ± 0.035 vs. 0.727 ± 0.039, n = 2, P = 0.021; Fig. 2A) and 48 hours (male, 0.995 ± 0.074 vs. 0.783 ± 0.033, n = 4, P = 0.016; Fig. 2B; female, 0.971 ± 0.069 vs. 0.866 ± 0.058, n = 3, P = 0.040, Fig. 2E) of surgery. At the 48-hour time point, repeated measures ANOVA across the time course revealed a significant effect of LPS treatment (i.e., right vs left striatum; male, F1,3 = 22.2, P = 0.018; female, F1,2 = 64.2, P = 0.015) and time x brain region interaction (male, F38,114 = 2.22, P = 0.00063; female, F38,76 = 1.81, P = 0.014), suggesting significantly increased 6-[18F]FDF retention with time in both males and females induced by LPS. No significant difference in TACs between left and right striatum was observed (P > 0.05) at one-week (Fig. 2C and 2F), two-weeks (Fig. 2D and 2G) and one-month (male only, data not shown) after LPS in either male (n = 2), female (n = 3) or when combined. As a control brain area, hippocampus did not show any left and right side difference in TACs at any time points studied in male (Fig. 3A-3D) or female rats (Fig. 3E-3G), indicating the specificity of LPS-induced local response.
With the left-brain region as the reference, the BP on the right side was estimated with simplified reference tissue model (Lammertsma and Hume 1996). As shown in Fig. 4A, one-way ANOVA showed significant change of BP with time in LPS injected striatum in both male (F4,7 = 5.63, P = 0.024) and female rats (F2,6 = 5.89, P = 0.038), with significantly higher BP at 48 hours compared to later time points. Comparing male and female rats, a two-way ANOVA including the three time points of 48-hours, one-week and two-weeks showed a significant effect of sex (F1,11 = 7.9, P = 0.017) and time (F2,11 = 10.3, P = 0.003) but not sex x time interaction (F2,11 = 1.57, P = 0.25), suggesting that male rats had significantly higher BP in the ipsilateral striatum than the females at 48-hour of LPS injection but the response was later diminished with time in both sexes.
Increased [18F]FDG uptake in LPS-injected striatum after one week
We also performed dynamic PET imaging of [18F]FDG in LPS rat models of neuroinflammation for comparison. As expected, [18F]FDG was rapidly taken up and retained in the rodent brain throughout the 120 min acquisition. PET scans in male rats following LPS-injection showed increased radioactivity accumulation at one-week post-LPS (Fig. 5). At one-week (Fig. 6B), but not at other time points (Fig. 6A, 6C and 6D), TAC analyses demonstrated a significant difference in the right vs. left striatum (n = 4; F1,3 = 9.96, P = 0.05) and time x brain region interaction (F38,114 = 1.58, P = 0.035), which is consistent with increased [18F]FDG retention local to the LPS-injected striatum. The control brain region hippocampus did not show any difference in the left versus right striatum as indicated by the TACs at any time points (P > 0.05; Fig. 6E-6H). Accordingly, the BP for [18F]FDG in the ipsilateral striatum versus contralateral side (Fig. 4B) peaked at one week post-LPS injection, which was significantly higher than at other time points (one-way ANOVA F3,11 = 5.67, P = 0.014). This pattern of BP following LPS-injection into the right striatum is drastically different from that observed following 6-[18F]FDF injection, indicating that fructose and glucose metabolism are not occurring in the same population of cells.