The Immunohistochemical Study of c-Fos Change of Cardiomyocytes in Electrocution Victims

It has been a puzzling forensic task to determine the cause of death as a result of electric shock in the absence of recognizable skin marks or definite postmortem morphological findings. In forensic pathology, while classical macroscopic and microscopic morphology remain core procedures to investigate deaths, a variety of subsidiary parameters has been developed and incorporated to detail that pathology. Among the candidates, c-fos, a proto-oncogene, is one of a small group of genes called primary response genes and its protein product, c-Fos, are crucial elements of signal transduction and believe to be responsible for cell response to stimulation. It has been found that c-Fos plays a significant role in myocardial lesions, and has close relation to injury repair of the molecule. Once a study had concluded that there was close relationship between c-Fos and electrocution in animal models, however, there has been no human similar experiment till now. To better characterize the morphologic changes in electrocution of human, we collected 5 victims proved to be died of electrocution as experiment group and 16 victims died of non-electrical death cases as control group. The protein, c-Fos, in all subjects were studied via immunohistochemical analysis. We compared the morphological changes between these two groups, it’s more common to see petechiae, diffuse fragmentation of the myocardium, and ‘‘Square’’ appearance in septal myocardial nuclei in the experimental group. In immunohistochemical analysis , increased c-Fos protein positive cardiomyocyte nuclei was also seen, and no c-Fos protein expression was seen in non-electrical death control group relatively. Our preliminary conclusion revealed that classical histopathology observation in epidermis and ventricular septum associates with immunohistochemical staining can give us more correct diagnosis in cause of death in electrocution.