Conclusion

In a conclusion, rubidium is available in nuclear medicine as it is the second most electropositive metal and rubidium has no known biological role and it is non-toxic. Rubidium can be absorbing from food and average person has stores of about half a gram in the body as same as potassium. The development of the rubidium generator has progressed to the stage where it has been safely applied to PET studies in clinical nuclear medicine, in breast cancer and immune response. In Malaysia, rubidium usage still in low percent as we rarely used rubidium for treat disease.

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REFERENCES

[1] Keiichiro Yoshinaga, Ran Klein and Nagara Tamaki. 2010.

Generator-produced rubidium-82 positron emission tomography myocardial perfusion imaging—–Frombasic aspects to clinical applications. Journal of Cardiology 55: 163- 173.

[2] Mercadante S. (1997). Malignant bone pain: pathophysiology and treatment. Pain 69:1–1.

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CHAPTER 10

IRON-59

Nurul Farhah Mokhtar Din

10.0 INTRODUCTION

What is meant by radiopharmaceuticals?. Generally, radiopharmaceuticals can be defined as a group of pharmaceutical drug which contain radioactivity. It is a formation that designated to be used through an in-vivo experiment that contains a radionuclide. In can be form in a simple salt or a complex. Radiopharmaceutical may be present in three kind of form namely solid, liquid or pseudo gas. In-vivo experiment is basically an experiment that includes the examination involves the living organism. Thus, the chemical and physical identify includes the form of radiopharmaceutical is important as it may vary according to each treatment. It is because, once a radiopharmaceutical is used, it has its own specific tissues target, biochemical pathways and binding sites. Radiopharmaceuticals can be used as diagnostic and therapeutic purposes and it may depend on what kind of physiochemical and the radioactive used. Thus it can reflect based on the properties of specified radioactive.

Isotopes are atoms of an elements that have the same number of proton but different number of nucleon. It emits radioactive naturally or may be produced artificially if it is in unstable state. However, the radioactive emitted have its own ability on penetrating with materials that have different densities and thickness. It also may kill the cells or causes the cell mutation. Moreover, it has a few applications mainly in medicines, agriculture, archaeology and industries. As the diseases is found on the specific part in patient’ body, he/she may take radioisotopes as one of the medical solution. The radiation emitted enables the organ to be easily detected and imaged by imaging machine. Thus the diseases may be localized and treated. As an example, Iodine-131 is used as a tracer of thyroid gland.

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Basically, nuclear medicine is a modern technique on imaging a disease of a patient. It technically been done by injecting a small amount of radioactive materials called radiotracers or radiopharmaceuticals into the patient’s bloodstream. It even can be taking by patient through inhale or swallow the radioactive materials depending on the type of nuclear medicine test. A special camera will detect the radiation emitted by those radioactive on the specific part of human body according to the properties of radioactive itself thus displaying the images of our body through the computer. In most centers, nuclear medicines images is displayed on computer tomography (CT) or a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). It is done to give a detailed view inside of the human body thus an accurate diagnosis could be obtained. Apart from that, this technique gives a particular information that might not be able detected by other type imaging machine. It possibly to detect the diseases such as cancers, heart disease, gastrointestinal, neurological disorders, endocrine and other abnormalities potentially in their early stages. Besides diagnoses, therapeutic is also may be used in nuclear medicine treatment. For example, Iodine-131 is used as radioactive therapy to treat cancer or other diseases.

There are some common uses of nuclear medicine treatment. It is used in adults to visualize the heart blood flow, detection of coronary artery disease, detection of heart transplant rejection and evaluating heart function before and after chemotherapy. It may also been use to scan lungs for respiratory and blood flow problems.

Table 1 Radioisotopes and it uses

RADIOISOTOPES USES

Ammonia N-13 Injection is a radioactive diagnostic agent for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) indicated for diagnostic PET imaging of the myocardium under rest or pharmacologic stress conditions to evaluate myocardial perfusion in patients with suspected or existing coronary artery disease.

Chromium-51 Chromium chloride injection is used to label red blood cells and quantify gastro intestinal protein loss cyanocobalamine preparation used for diagnosis of pernicious anaemia.

Dysprosium -165 Used as an aggregated hydroxide for synovectomy treatment of arthritis.

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Fluorine-18 Used for cerebral, myocardial and tumour glucose metabolism.

Holmium-166 Developed for diagnosis and treatment of liver tumours. Iodine-125 As iothalamate sodium used diagnostically to evaluate the

filtration rate of kidneys and to diagnose deep vein thrombosis in the leg. It is also widely used in radioimmuno assays to show the presence of hormones in minute quantities

Iodine-131 As sodium iodide 131 used as a diagnostic aid for studying the function of the thyroid gland and in scanning the thyroid for determining size, position and possible tumour location. Iodine 131 as sodium iodohippurate as a diagnostic for studying kidney function.

Iron-59 Ferric chloride solution used in studies of iron metabolism in the spleen.

Oxygen-15 Studies of tissue water content and as a tracer for regional blood flow.

Potassium-42 As potassium chloride injection, used for the determination of exchangeable potassium in coronary blood flow.

Rubidium-86 Rubidium chloride injection used for determination of myocardial blood flow.

Selenium-75 Used in the form of seleno-methionine to study the production of digestive enzymes.

Sodium-24 As sodium chloride injection to study sodium exchange. Xenon-133 Used for pulmonary (lung) ventilation studies.

Gallium-67 As gallium citrate used for tumour imaging and localisation of inflammatory lesions (infections). Strontium-89 It delivers radiation to cancer sites and ultimately

decreases bone pain. The length of treatment depends on the types of drugs you are taking, how well your body responds to them, and the type of cancer you have. Thallium-201 Thallous chloride used for diagnosis of coronary artery

disease other heart conditions such as heart muscle death and for location of low-grade lymphomas.

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