Sibel GÖKSEL, Ogün BÜLBÜL, Recep BEDİR, Sema RAKICI
Meandros Medical and Dental Journal - 2026;27(2):219-225
Objective: Our study was to investigate the correlation between metabolic tumor parameters of the primary tumor and programmed cell death protein -1 (PD -1) expression of the tumor cell and the value of fluorine -18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/comput ed tomography (18F -FDG PET/CT) imaging in predicting the PD -1 expression in non -small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) . Materials and Methods: A total of 79 patients diagnosed with NSCLC were included in this retrospective study. PD -1 expression of tumors was determined by immunohistochemistry staining. All patients had PET/CT scans available at initial staging. The correlation between PD -1 expre ssion of tumor cells and metabolic PET/CT parameters of the primary tumor was evaluated by Spearman correlation analysis. Whether metabolic PET/CT parameters predicted PD -1 expression was evaluated by Receiver operating characteristi c (ROC) Curve analysis . Results: No statistically significant relationship has been detected between the metabolic tumor parameters of the primary tumor and other clinicopathological data, or with PD -1 expression in tumor cells . Conclusion: 18F-FDG uptake rate in tumor cells is a non -invasive method that indicates biomarker status in cancer patients. Clinicians use biomarkers such as PD -1 to help them decide whether to start immunotherapy in their patients. In this study, no relationship was found between the metabolic PET/CT parameters and PD -1 expression .
