Citation

Drugescu N, Curca C, Girbea G, Constantinescu A. Rom. J. Leg. Med. 1997; 5(2): 128-136.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, Romanian Legal Medicine Society)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Determination of hepatitis markers in cadavers. We have studied in 58 randomly selected cadavers the presence of various types of parenterally transmitted hepatitis viruses (B, C and D), our main objective being the evaluation of the professional risk associated with forensic autopsies. Each case have been tested for the presence of the following markers: AgHBs, AgHBe, anti-HBs, total anti-HBc, total anti-HCV and total anti-Delta. This set of tests, cover all the immunobiological variants of a vital hepatitis that can be relied upon in cadaver serum. As AgHBs positive was found in 22.41% of the cases (either recent infection or chronic carrier) and in 23.59% AgHBs was negative but AgHbc was positive (the 'anticore window effect' explains why the determination of only AgHBs do not estimate correctly the infectious risk), it results that 55% of all cases presented a serious risk of B hepatitis infection. D hepatitis was found in 1.72% as coinfection. An unexpected observation was that only 27% of suicides were virus hepatitis B or C free, although the number of cases is insufficient for statistic processing the authors believe that recent hepatic viral infections B or C might play a part in triggering the suicidal act. The differentiation between recent B viral infection and chronic carrier status cannot be made based only on postmortem serologic determination (dynamic determinations are impossible); it should associate microscopic investigation of the liver. Delta infection can be diagnosed in cadaver using anti-HBc IGM.

Language: romanian

Keywords

Hepatitis markers in cadaver; Suicide