What are PET drugs?
PET drugs are radioactive drugs administered to patients so that a special camera, called a PET scanner, can take images of internal body organs and tissues. These images aid in diagnosing disease and assessing specific health concerns. PET images show the chemical functioning of an organ or tissue and are unlike X-ray or MRI images, which show only body structure. PET imaging is useful in patients with certain conditions affecting the brain and the heart as well as in patients with certain types of cancer. PET drugs contain a very small amount of radioactive material, similar to the material used in other diagnostic procedures. One of the distinctive properties of PET drugs is that, because of their short half-lives, (a half-life is defined as the time it takes one-half of the product’s radioactive isotope to decay) they must be administered to patients within a few hours of being produced. 4. Why is FDA regulating PET drugs? PET drugs were originally developed as a research tool, but
