Immunohistochemical study on neuronal changes in brainstem nucleus of sudden infant death syndrome and various caouses of death

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Scvcral nuclei in brain stem are well known to play an important role in supporting human life. However, the connection between neural changes of brain stem and the cause of death is not yet fully understood. To investigate the correlation of brain stem damage with the cause of death in forensic autopsy cases, neural changes of several nuclei were examined using immunohistochemical technique. Based in the cause of death, the forensic autopsy cases were divides into 6 groups as follows. Group A : hanging, ligature strangulation and manual strangulation, Group B : smothering arid choking, Group C : drowning, Group D : sudden infant death syndrome(SIDS), Group E : respiratory failure, Group F : heat stroke and sun stroke. The brain-stem were stained with the antibodies against microtuble-associated protein 2 (MAP2), muscalinic acetycholine receptor (mACh-R), c-fos gene product (c-Fos) and 72 kD heat-shock protein (HSP70), and the immunostaining of the-se markers in the arcuate nucleus (ARC), the hypoglossal nucleus (HN) and inferior olive (I0) was examined. In ease of asphyxia, neurons in HN were positively stained with both HSP70 and c-Fos antibodies, although morphological changes of these neurons was not evident. This may indicate that the occlusion of upper airway results in the damage to neurons in HN without their morphological changes. Positive staining of HSP70 and c-Fos in IO was more frequently observed in Group C than other groups. Since IO is involved in maintaining body balance which is often disturbed by drowning, it seems possible that neuronal damage in IO observed in drowning may be related to the disturbance of body balance. Consistent with the finding reported previously, the number of neurons with positive staining of mAChR in Group D was less than that in other groups. These observations indicate that immnuohistochemical study on the damage to neurons in brain stein nuclei can provide useful information for determining the cause of death.