Comparison of ¹²³I-metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) and ¹³¹I-MIBG Semi-quantitative Scores in Predicting Survival in Patients with Stage 4 Neuroblastoma: a Report from the Children's Oncology Group

Background: ¹²³I-metaiodobenzylguanidine (MIBG) scans are preferable to ¹³¹I-MIBG for neuroblastoma imaging as they deliver less patient radiation yet have greater sensitivity in disease detection. Both ¹²³I-MIBG and ¹³¹I-MIBG scans were used for disease assessments of neuroblastoma patients enrolled on Children's Oncology Group (COG) high-risk study A3973. The hypothesis was that ¹²³I-MIBG and ¹³¹I-MIBG scans were sufficiently similar for clinical purposes in terms of ability to predict survival.

Procedure: Patients enrolled on COG A3973 with stage 4 disease who completed ¹²³I-MIBG or ¹³¹I-MIBG scans at diagnosis, post-induction, post-transplant, or post-biotherapy were analyzed. The performance of the Curie score for each MIBG scan type in predicting survival was evaluated. At each time point, survival curves for ¹²³I-MIBG versus ¹³¹I-MIBG were compared using the log-rank test.

Results: Of the 413 patients on A3973 with at least one MIBG scan, 350 were stage 4. The 5-year event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) rates were 33.4 ± 3.6% and 45.6 ± 4.0% (N = 350). At post-induction, EFS (P = 0.3501) and OS (P = 0.5337) for ¹²³I-MIBG versus ¹³¹I-MIBG were not significantly different. Similarly, comparisons at the three other time points were non-significant.

Conclusions: We found no evidence of a statistically significant difference in outcome by type of scan. For future survival analyses of MIBG Curie scores, ¹²³I-MIBG and ¹³¹I-MIBG results may be combined and analyzed overall, without adjustment for scan type.