Correlation between thoracic aorta 18F-natrium fluoride uptake and cardiovascular risk

Table 1 Patients' characteristics

	Patients number	Mean age	Gender m/f	Systolic bp	Bp treatment (Yes/No)	Smoke	Diabetes	BMI	Mean CVR	Whole thoracic aorta TBR	NGMCS
Low CVR	22	58.3 ± 8.2	7/15	114 ± 5	2/20	1/21	2/22	24 ± 1	6.6% ± 2.3%	1.14 ± 0.34	104 ± 46
Medium CVR	36	65 ± 9.5	10/26	123 ± 6	12/24	14/22	5/31	25 ± 3	14.3% ± 3%	1.4 ± 0.4	62 ± 21
High CVR	20	65 ± 9.1	10/10	128 ± 11	8/12	19/1	15/5	27 ± 2	29% ± 2.4%	1.8 ± 0.75	43 ± 17

CVR: Cardiovascular risk; TBR: Target-to-background ratio; BMI: Body mass index; NGMCS: Normalized global molecular calcification score.

Table 2 Target-to-background ratio differences in risk group (P value)

	High	Medium	Low
Thoracic aorta
High	-	0.031	0.002
Medium	0.031	-	0.023
Low	0.002	0.023	-
Ascending aorta
High	-	0.085	0.013
Medium	0.085	-	0.056
Low	0.013	0.056	-
Aortic arch
High	-	0.066	0.007
Medium	0.066	-	0.033
Low	0.007	0.033	-
Descending aorta
High	-	0.012	0.001
Medium	0.012	-	0.018
Low	0.001	0.018	-
Normalized global molecular calc. Score
High	-	0.000	0.000
Medium	0.000	-	0.003
Low	0.000	0.003	-

Table 3 Correlation between aortic uptake, cardiovascular risk and normalized global molecular calcification score

Segment TBR	CVR		NGMCS
	R2	R	R2	R
Ascending	0.52	0.72	0.27	0.52
Arch	0.48	0.70	0.35	0.59
Descending	0.62	0.79	0.52	0.72
All segments	0.67	0.82	0.45	0.67

CVR: Cardiovascular risk; TBR: Target-to-background ratio; NGMCS: Normalized global molecular calcification score.