Objective To explore the metabolic changes in the resting brain glucose of patients with lymphoma but without brain metastasis.

Methods A total of 102 patients with histologically confirmed lymphoma without treatment underwent ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT examination. The whole-body ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT images of the patients were retrospectively analyzed. Fifteen patients suffered from Hodgkin′s lymphoma and 87 of them had non-Hodgkin′s lymphoma. Seventy-seven healthy subjects were included as controls for comparison. The metabolic changes in resting brain glucose of the 102 patients with lymphoma were analyzed using statistical parametric mapping software.

Results Compared with the control group, hypometabolic brain areas in the patients with lymphoma were observed mainly in the bilateral superior, middle, inferior temporal gyri; bilateral superior frontal gyrus; right middle frontal gyrus; and right cerebellum. Hypermetabolic areas were not observed in our patients.

Conclusions The reduced metabolic cerebral regions in the patients with lymphoma involved a number of functional regions related to mood disorder and immunity.