{"doi":"10.1093/infdis/jiad159","title":"Evaluating the Performance of Pathogen-Targeted Positron Emission Tomography Radiotracers in a Rat Model of Vertebral Discitis-Osteomyelitis","abstract":"BACKGROUND: Vertebral discitis-osteomyelitis (VDO) is a devastating infection of the spine that is challenging to distinguish from noninfectious mimics using computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. We and others have developed novel metabolism-targeted positron emission tomography (PET) radiotracers for detecting living Staphylococcus aureus and other bacteria in vivo, but their head-to-head performance in a well-validated VDO animal model has not been reported. METHODS: We compared the performance of several PET radiotracers in a rat model of VDO. [11C]PABA and [18F]FDS were assessed for their ability to distinguish S aureus, the most common non-tuberculous pathogen VDO, from Escherichia coli. RESULTS: In the rat S aureus VDO model, [11C]PABA could detect as few as 103 bacteria and exhibited the highest signal-to-background ratio, with a 20-fold increased signal in VDO compared to uninfected tissues. In a proof-of-concept experiment, detection of bacterial infection and discrimination between S aureus and E coli was possible using a combination of [11C]PABA and [18F]FDS. CONCLUSIONS: Our work reveals that several bacteria-targeted PET radiotracers had sufficient signal to background in a rat model of S aureus VDO to be potentially clinically useful. [11C]PABA was the most promising tracer investigated and warrants further investigation in human VDO.","journal":"The Journal of Infectious Diseases","year":2023,"id":353084,"datarank":0.32958368660043297,"base_score":2.1972245773362196,"endowment":2.1972245773362196,"self_citation_contribution":0.32958368660043297,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.32958368660043297,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":8,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9638,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":363842,"name":"Marina López‐Álvarez","orcid":"0000-0001-5794-5951","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":940613,"name":"Aryn A. Alanizi","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":339305,"name":"Justin Luu","orcid":"0009-0005-3562-7529","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1099847,"name":"Ilona Polvoy","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1058598,"name":"Alexandre M. Sorlin","orcid":"0000-0002-9589-6131","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":488323,"name":"Hecong Qin","orcid":"0000-0003-2618-8366","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1099293,"name":"Sang‐Hee Lee","orcid":"0000-0001-8578-9968","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1059117,"name":"Sarah Rabbitt","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1099848,"name":"Priamo A. Pichardo-González","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241541,"name":"Alvaro A. Ordoñez","orcid":"0000-0002-8571-0655","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":538163,"name":"Joseph Blecha","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":103700,"name":"Oren S. Rosenberg","orcid":"0000-0002-5736-4388","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":272317,"name":"Robert R. Flavell","orcid":"0000-0002-8694-1199","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":583342,"name":"Joanne N. Engel","orcid":"0000-0002-2168-9711","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":241543,"name":"Sanjay K. Jain","orcid":"0000-0001-9620-7070","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":535118,"name":"Michael A. Ohliger","orcid":"0000-0001-6878-8189","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":488328,"name":"David M. Wilson","orcid":"0000-0002-1095-046X","position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":587376,"name":"Matthew F.L. Parker","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":55,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:12:58.542950Z","pmid":"37788505","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}