An Italian and a Dutch radiologist have launched the Gadolinium Retention Evaluation Consortium (GREC), a group that seeks to foster broad-based and international collaboration on addressing the safety of gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs).
The goal for GREC is to bring together preclinical research labs from academia and contrast manufacturers, experienced clinical research groups from academia, and specialists in clinical epidemiology and guidelines development in the field of contrast media safety, according to Dr. Carlo Quattrocchi, PhD, of the Università Campus Bio-Medico Rome in Italy and Dr. Aart van der Molen of Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.
The European branch of the consortium -- called E-GREC -- held its inaugural meeting on 4-6 November in Naples, Italy. The meeting included luminaries from Germany, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Italy, as well as representatives from the four major contrast media companies -- Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Bracco Imaging, GE Healthcare, and Guerbet, according to Quattrocchi and van der Molen.
"The intense discussion fostered the contribution of participants to give their critical expert opinion and suggest methodological approaches to increase knowledge on the issue without incurring research bias," they noted in a statement. "Issues on methods of data sharing, harmonization, and integration among different institutions across Europe and abroad were discussed."
The meeting emphasized the need for an integrated approach that covers all organ systems in addressing the problem of gadolinium retention.
"Most importantly was that all participants stressed the importance and excellent safety track record of gadolinium-enhanced MRI as a key diagnostic technique for evaluation of disease in all parts of the body, irrespective of the type of GBCA," they said.
E-GREC has now created a task force to draw up suggestions for uniform terminology and develop guidelines for improved and uniform research methodologies. The goal is to reduce variability in study designs and evaluation techniques for both preclinical and clinical studies, according to Quattrocchi and van der Molen.
Members of E-GREC will also be traveling to next week's RSNA 2016 meeting in Chicago, where they plan to update their colleagues on the initiative. They hope to extend GREC into an international version, which would be called I-GREC.
