Delimitation of the time of death by immunohistochemical detection of glucagon in pancreatic alpha-cells.

摘要

To improve the possibilities of delimitating the time of death after longer laytime it was examined if this is possible by immunohistochemical glucagon detection. The results show that in our examination material the pancreatic alpha-cells of up to 6-day-old corpses produce a positive immunoreaction towards glucagon in all cases whereas none of the corpses older than 14 days show such a reaction. This means that in the case of a negative immunoreaction the time of death can be assumed to lie more than 7 days before the autopsy. The fact that a negative immunoreaction occurs consistently after 14 days leads to the conclusion that when glucagon has been stained in a specimen, the death of the respective person must lie a maximum of 13 days earlier, whereby under markedly different conditions to the ones of the cases here examined, a negative immunoreaction could happen earlier and a positive immunoreaction even later.