title: Association between ¹⁸F-FDG uptake and molecular subtype of breast cancer.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To determine whether (18)F-FDG uptake in breast cancer correlates with immunohistochemically defined subtype and is able to predict molecular subtypes.
  
  
  METHODS
  This retrospective study involved 306 patients with 308 mass-type invasive breast cancers (mean size 2.65 cm, range 1.0-15.0 cm) who underwent (18)F-FDG PET/CT before therapy. The correlations between primary tumour (18)F-FDG uptake on PET/CT, expressed as SUVmax, and clinicopathological findings and molecular subtype, i.e. luminal A, luminal B (HER2-negative), luminal B (HER2-positive), HER2-positive and triple-negative, were analysed. The predictors of these subtypes were investigated.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The mean SUVmax of the 308 tumours was 5.33 ± 3.63 (range 1.15-19.01). Among the subtypes of the 308 tumours, 87 (28.2 %) were luminal A, 111 (36.0 %) were luminal B (HER2-negative), 31 (10.1 %) were luminal B (HER2-positive), 26 (8.4 %) were HER2-positive and 53 (17.2 %) were triple-negative, and the corresponding mean SUVmax were 3.41 ± 2.07 (range 1.18-14.30), 5.17 ± 3.52 (range 1.35-19.01), 6.57 ± 3.84 (range 1.42-15.58), 7.55 ± 3.63 (range 2.30-13.60) and 6.97 ± 4.17 (range 1.15-16.06), respectively. A cut-off value of 3.60 yielded 70.1 % sensitivity and 66.1 % specificity with an area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC) of 0.734 for predicting that a tumour was of the luminal A subtype. A cut-off value of 6.75 yielded 65.4 % sensitivity and 75.2 % specificity with an AUC of 0.704 for predicting a HER2-positive subtype.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  SUVmax, a metabolic semiquantitative parameter, shows a significant correlation with the molecular subtype of breast cancer, and is useful for predicting the luminal A or HER2-positive subtype.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nuclear Medicine and PET center, Hyogo College of Medicine, 1-1 Mukogawa-cho, Nishinomiya, Hyogo, 663-8501, Japan, kazu10041976@yahoo.co.jp.
authors.forename: Kazuhiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kitajima
authors.forename: Kazuhito
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fukushima
authors.forename: Yasuo
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Miyoshi
authors.forename: Arisa
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Nishimukai
authors.forename: Seiichi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hirota
authors.forename: Yoko
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Igarashi
authors.forename: Takayuki
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Katsuura
authors.forename: Kaoru
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Maruyama
authors.forename: Shozo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Hirota
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001692:Biological Transport; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18 / Q000378:metabolism*; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D064847:Multimodal Imaging; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D012189:Retrospective Studies; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
chemical_list: D019788:Fluorodeoxyglucose F18