Pancreatic islet transplantation is a promising therapy for patients with type 1 diabetes. However, the duration of long-term graft survival is limited due to inflammatory as well as non-inflammatory processes and routine clinical tests are not suitable to monitor islet survival. In-exendin-SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) is a promising method to non-invasively image islets after transplantation and has the potential to help improve the clinical outcome. Whether In-exendin-SPECT allows detecting small differences in beta-cell mass (BCM) and measuring the actual volume of islets that were successfully engrafted has yet to be demonstrated. Here, we evaluated the performance of In-exendin-SPECT using an intramuscular islet transplantation model in C3H mice. In vivo imaging of animals transplanted with 50, 100, 200, 400 and 800 islets revealed an excellent linear correlation between SPECT quantification of In-exendin uptake and insulin-positive area of islet transplants, demonstrating that In-exendin-SPECT specifically and accurately measures BCM. The high sensitivity of the method allowed measuring small differences in graft volumes, including grafts that contained less than 50 islets. The presented method is reliable, convenient and holds great potential for non-invasive monitoring of BCM after islet transplantation in humans.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5543140PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-07815-3DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

islet transplantation
12
small differences
8
islet
6
non-invasive vivo
4
vivo determination
4
determination viable
4
viable islet
4
islet graft
4
graft volume
4
volume in-exendin-3
4

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!