Bj. Hu et al., IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL STUDY OF FIBRONECTIN FOR POSTMORTEM DIAGNOSIS OF EARLY MYOCARDIAL-INFARCTION, Forensic science international, 78(3), 1996, pp. 209-217
The postmortem diagnosis of early myocardial infarction has been a puz
zling problem in forensic practice. In the present study, an immunohis
tochemical study of fibronectin (FN) was performed for the first time
on 34 autopsy hearts to determine early myocardial infarction with str
eptavidin/biotin/peroxidase technique. Five cases of definite myocardi
al infarction showed positive FN staining of cardiomyocytes; of 18 cas
es where early myocardial infarction was suspected, positive FN staini
ng of cardiomyocytes was found in 15 cases, but no such staining was s
een in 11 non-cardiac death controls. The results led to the conclusio
n that positive FN staining in cardiomyocytes is' a reliable marker of
acute myocardial infarction and could be used as a new, sensitive met
hod for the postmortem diagnosis of early myocardial infarction. It is
worth noting that all cases in this study were autopsied between 8 h
and 4 days after death and 5 cases had been fixed in 10% formalin for
over 10 years. FN immunohistochemistry still gave satisfactory results
in those cases. It seemed that FN was not affected by postmortem auto
lysis and formalin-fixation and could be used in routine forensic prac
tice, especially for retrospective analysis of cases.