Table 1

Summary of the meta-data

Case 1	Case 2	Case 3	Case 4	Case 5	Case 6	Case 7	Case 8	Case 9
Age	88	86	73	67	33	70	87	77	68
Sex	Female	Male	Female	Female	Female	Male	Female	Male	Male
BMI	29	24	32	30	38	29	27	26	13
Race	White Caucasian	White Caucasian	White Caucasian	White Caucasian	White Caucasian	White Caucasian	White Caucasian	White Caucasian	White Caucasian
Diabetes			✔ (type 1)		✔ (type 1)	✔ (type 1)	✔ (type 2)
Hypertension		✔		✔	✔	✔
COPD		✔					✔	✔	✔
Asthma			✔
Heart disease		✔	✔			✔		✔
Other comorbidities	Dementia	Dementia		DVT, alcoholism		Parkinson’s disease	Stroke		HIV
Symptoms prior to death	None	Cough, fever, unsteadiness	Shortness of breath	Chronic cough, non-specifically unwell, collapse, sudden cardiac arrest	Cough, pleuritic chest pain	Sudden asystolic cardiac arrest	Sudden-onset shortness of breath	Sudden asystolic cardiac arrest	Chronic cough and shortness of breath (no new symptoms)
Place of death	Care home	Care home	Home	A&E	Home	A&E	Home	A&E	Home
PMI	5 days	8 days	10 days	10 days	5 days	7 days	8 days	7 days	10 days

A&E, accident and emergency; BMI, body mass index; COPD, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; DVT, deep vein thrombosis; PMI, postmortem interval.