Abe Shuntaro, Hasegawa Iwao, Vogel Hermann, Heinemann Axel, Suzuki Koichi, Püschel Klaus
Department of Legal Medicine, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 22529 Hamburg, Germany; Division of Preventive & Social Medicine, Department of Legal Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Osaka Medical College, 2-7, Daigaku-machi, Takatsuki, Osaka, Japan; Tokyo Medical Examiner's Office, Tokyo Metropolitan Government, 4-21-18 Otsuka, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Department of Legal Medicine, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, 22529 Hamburg, Germany; Tokyo Medical Examiner's Office, Tokyo Metropolitan Government, 4-21-18 Otsuka, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
Leg Med (Tokyo). 2015 Jul;17(4):251-4. doi: 10.1016/j.legalmed.2015.02.006. Epub 2015 Mar 3.
The thymus is exceedingly sensitive to stress and undergoes abrupt involution as a result of exposure to strong stress in early childhood. Therefore, thymic involution is often utilized to assess the presence of a stressful environment, such as an environment involving child abuse, in forensic medicine. In recent years, computed tomography (CT) has been commonly used in the daily practice of forensic medicine. We have focused on the thymic volume in postmortem CT images to evaluate the presence of a stressful antemortem environment. We calculated the thymus volume from postmortem CT images of children under six years old and demonstrated that the volume showed a positive correlation with the real weight obtained from an autopsy. The evaluation of thymic volume by CT may make it possible for us to identify child maltreatment. The most useful feature of this application of CT is to be able to demonstrate thymic involution less invasively in a surviving victim.
胸腺对压力极其敏感，在儿童早期暴露于强烈压力下会迅速退化。因此，在法医学中，胸腺退化常被用于评估是否存在压力环境，如涉及虐待儿童的环境。近年来，计算机断层扫描（CT）已在法医学日常实践中广泛应用。我们关注死后CT图像中的胸腺体积，以评估生前压力环境的存在情况。我们从6岁以下儿童的死后CT图像中计算胸腺体积，并证明该体积与尸检获得的实际体重呈正相关。通过CT评估胸腺体积可能使我们能够识别儿童虐待情况。CT这种应用最有用的特点是能够在存活受害者中以侵入性较小的方式显示胸腺退化。
