ABSTRACT
F. Wehner and colleagues studied whether a positive immunoreaction to various antigens such as insulin, thyroglobulin or calcitonin is correlated with the time since death. The philosophy behind these investigations is that with an increasing postmortem interval, the tertiary structure of the antigen undergoes postmortem changes, and as a result of protein denaturation, stainings become negative. The pancreatic β-cells from up to 12-day-old corpses produce a positive immunoreaction towards insulin in all cases, whereas no corpse older than 30 days shows such a reaction. This means that in a case of negative immunoreaction, the time since death can be assumed to be more than 12 days before the autopsy. Calcitonin was always detectable in c-cells of the thyroid up to 4 days, and in bodies older than 13 days there was always negative staining. The immunohistochemical detection of antigens allows only a very rough estimation of the time since death, which may be helpful in single cases.
