Importance of the nutritional status for the interpretation of nuclear medicine examinations

Malnutrition is very prevalent in the Third World, but still in developing Countries and is found in certain communities in developed Countries. Several laboratories examinations are affected by malnutrition. Recently, gestational or neonatal malnutrition were considered to contribute to the development of chronic diseases in adulthood, this phenomena was named programming or metabolic imprinting. Similar consideration were suggested for Nuclear Medicine examinations. Here we review the literature about this aspect and present our own data showing changes in biodistribution of a radiopharmaceutical compound in different animal models of adult malnutrition or caused by maternal malnutrition programming