Author: Chung, Stephanie T ; Hall, Kevin D ; Zhou, Megan S ; Chi, Meible ; Courville, Amber B ; Howard, Rebecca ; Urbanski, Nicholas ; Stagliano, Michael ; Yang, Shanna ; LaNoire, Melissa ; Darcey, Valerie L ; Guo, Juen ; Turner, Sara ; Gallagher, Isabelle ; Milley, Lauren ; Yim, Eunha ; Zhai, Nan ; Schick, Alex ; Herscovitch, Peter
The relationship between adiposity and dopamine type-2 receptor binding potential (D2BP) in the human brain has been repeatedly studied for >20 years with highly discrepant results, likely due to variable methodologies and differing study populations. We conducted a controlled inpatient feeding study to measure D2BP in the striatum using positron emission tomography with both [18F]fallypride and [11C]raclopride in pseudo-random order in 54 young adults with a wide range of body mass index (BMI 20-44 kg/m2). Within-subject D2BP measurements using the two tracers were moderately correlated (r=0.47, p<0.001). D2BP was negatively correlated with BMI as measured by [11C]raclopride (r= -0.51; p<0.0001) but not [18F]fallypride (r=-0.01; p=0.92) and these correlation coefficients were significantly different from each other (p<0.001). Given that [18F]fallypride has greater binding affinity to dopamine type-2 receptors than [11C]raclopride, which is more easily displaced by endogenous dopamine, our results suggest that adiposity is positively associated with increased striatal dopamine tone.