Section of Legal Medicine, Department of Interdisciplinary Medicine, Bari Policlinico Hospital, University of Bari, 70124, Bari, Italy.
Section of Hygiene, Department of Biomedical Sciences and Human Oncology, Bari Policlinico Hospital, University of Bari, 70124, Bari, Italy.
Forensic Sci Med Pathol. 2021 Sep;17(3):403-410. doi: 10.1007/s12024-021-00375-z. Epub 2021 May 8.
Since the beginning of March 2020, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has been the cause of millions of deaths worldwide. The need to better define the pathogenesis of coronavirus disease 19 (Covid-19) as well as to provide the correct statistical records concerning deaths related to this virus, inevitably involves the role of forensic pathology and routine autopsy practice. Currently, some data on macroscopic and microscopic features in autopsies performed in suspected Covid-19 cases are reported in the literature. The persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in cadavers has not yet been elucidated and only a few reports have emphasized the importance of evaluating the Virus RNA in post-mortem tissues. In this preliminary study, we observed that SARS-CoV-2 survives in multiple cadaver tissues many days after death despite some extreme conditions of post-mortem body preservation. The results of this on-going analysis could help improve the safety of working practices for pathologists as well as understanding the possible interaction between microbiological agents and the cadaver tissue's supravital reactions.
自 2020 年 3 月初以来，严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒 2（SARS-CoV-2）大流行已在全球范围内导致数百万人死亡。为了更好地定义冠状病毒病 19（Covid-19）的发病机制，并提供与该病毒相关的死亡的正确统计记录，不可避免地需要法医学和常规尸检实践的参与。目前，文献中报道了一些关于疑似 Covid-19 病例尸检中宏观和微观特征的数据。SARS-CoV-2 在尸体中的持续存在尚未阐明，只有少数报告强调了评估死后组织中病毒 RNA 的重要性。在这项初步研究中，我们观察到，尽管尸体有一些极端的保存条件，但 SARS-CoV-2 在死后多日仍存在于多种尸体组织中。这项正在进行的分析的结果可以帮助提高病理学家工作实践的安全性，并了解微生物制剂与尸体组织的存活反应之间可能的相互作用。
