Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging respiratory infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). COVID-19 has been reported to lead to acute cardiac injury, but previous research indicated that the mechanism is different from that of other viruses and remains poorly understood. Herein, we describe a case of COVID-19-associated sudden death, in a healthy 47-year-old man after developing diffuse cardiac necrosis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFForensic Sci Med Pathol
December 2023
Homicide by electrocution is rare in forensics, and the identification of the cause of death can be quite difficult when the electric device is removed from the scene. We present an instance where the police were unsure of homicide in the initial investigation. The offender used hand-made electrode plates for electrocution, which produced unique electric marks different from those produced by common electric devices such as electric wires.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a major direct cause of accidental death. Cervical SCI can lead to death in a short time period by neurogenic shock. Prompt vasopressor administration is recommended for patients with SCI accompanied by hypotension (systolic blood pressure < 90 mmHg).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecently, we were consulted about a challenging case, where an infant died by poisoning and the drug-dependent mother insisted that she unintentionally gave the toxic drug through breast milk. Accordingly, we investigated the utility of immunoblotting and microRNA (miRNA) profiling of the infant's gastric content (GC) to differentiate between breast-feeding and formula-feeding. As a pilot study, we sampled the GC from breast-fed (GCB) and formula-fed (GCF) infants, as well as gastric juice (GJ) from fasted adults at autopsy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA male in his 70s was found lying dead in the living room of his house. A gunshot entrance wound was observed in the left orbit, with a lead slug and wadding left in the skull, which exhibited fatal cranio-cerebral trauma. A cartridge had been discharged from a handmade launcher, or zip gun, that had been fixed to a spare gun barrel on a pipe chair, by heating the launcher from the side using a gas burner.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParent-child analyses sometimes reveal inconsistency of shared alleles at only one locus. This is conventionally called "single locus exclusion", which results from mutational events and the presence of null alleles. Here, in parent-child analyses of the Japanese population, we detected exclusions by using the GlobalFiler™ system comprising 21 short tandem repeat loci.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe genes belonging to Pumilio gene family of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe (S. pombe) were compared with genome information of the several fungi and their functions have been inferred using public-access databases disclosed on the internet websites. The Pumilio-family genes are conserved from yeast to man and have been considered to suppress the expression of other genes by binding their specific target messenger RNAs.
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