Immunohistochemical Study of Fibronectin for Postmortem Diagnosis of Early Myocadial Infarction.

Korean J Leg Med. 2002 May;26(1):1-6. Korean.

Department of Forensic Medicine, National Institute of Scientific Investigation, Korea. isyme@nisi.go.kr

The acute myocardial infarction is the most important form of ischemic heart disease and alone is the leading cause of death in korea. But the postmortem diagnosis of early myocardial infarction has been a puzzling problem in forensic practice because in those cases where sudden deaths occur in the very early stage of infarction, the myocardial lesions cannot be easily detect. In the presented study, an immunohistochemical study of fibronectin(FN) was performed on formalin fixed, paraffin embedded tissues obtained from 40 autopsy hearts to determine early myocardial infarction with strepavidin/biotin/peroxidase technique. Nine cases of definite myocardial infarction showed positive FN staining of cardiomyocytes: of 22 cases where early myocardial infarction was suspected, 16 cases showed positive FN staining of cardiomyocytes, but no such staining was seen in 9 non-cardiac death controls. The results led to the conclusion that positive FN staining of cardiomyocytes is a reliable marker of acute myocardial infarction and could be used a sensitive method for the postmortem diagnosis of early myocardial infarction. It seemed that FN was not affected by postmortem autolysis and formalin-fixation and could be used in routin forensic practice.

Key word: Myocardial infarction, Fibronectin, Immunohistochemistry