Delimitation of the time of death by immunohistochemical detection of thyroglobulin

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Abstract

To improve the possibilities to delimit the time of death after longer laytime it was examined if this is possible by immunohistochemical detection of thyroglobulin. The results show that in our examination material the colloid and the follicular cells of the thyroid glands of up to 5-day-old corpses produce a positive immunoreaction towards thyroglobulin in all cases whereas none of the corpses older than 13 days show such a reaction. This means that in case of a negative immunoreaction the time of death can be assumed to lie more than 6 days before the autopsy. The fact that a negative immunoreaction occurrs consistently after 13 days leads to the conclusion that when thyroglobulin has been stained in a specimen, the death of the respective person must lie a maximum of 12 days earlier, whereby these time-limits may change in considerably different surrounding conditions.

Introduction

The delimitation of the time since death becomes ever more difficult and imprecise, the further back it lies in time. To improve this situation, thyroid gland tissue of corpses, whose time of death lay within 1 day and 21 days±1 day according to criminal-police, was immunohistochemically stained with antithyroglobulin antibodies. The immunoreaction of the thyroglobulin in the thyroid gland colloid and follicular cells was then assessed. Because it can be expected that the tertiary structure of thyroglobulin undergoes post-mortal changes and thus, after protein-denaturation, is no more prone to be stained, a time-dependent stainability/non-stainability should exist.

Section snippets

Materials and methods

Prerequisites for the acceptance of the thyroid gland tissue into the immunohistochemical examination were firstly, that the time since death had been delimited by the criminal-police and, secondly, a heterogeneity regarding the milieu in which the corpses had lain, their constitution and the causes of death. Further, only corpses of people in whom no thyroid gland disease had been diagnosed in their life-time were let into the study. Taking the criteria into consideration, 147 corpses were

Results

In accordance with the different laytime and the various surrounding conditions, the cases showed different macroscopic and microscopic signs of autolysis and putrefication. In line with forensic practice, there was a higher proportion of cases with shorter laytime and the number of cases diminished with increasing time between death and postmortem.

While the negative-control never stained with the anti-thyroglobulin antibody, a time-dependent stainability of the endogenous thyroglobulin is

Discussion

Various methods are available to delimit the time since death. The measurement of temperature [1], [2], [3], morphological changes of sweat glands [4], chemical stimulation of the pupillary musculature [5], mechanical [6] and electrical [7] muscle-stimulation as well as the extent of rigor mortis [8] and postmortem lividity [9] are useful within of short and mid-long times since death. An estimation of the time of death after longer periods can only be made on the basis of putrefaction,

Acknowledgements

We thank the GRUS-Company GmbH for the material support.

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