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SUMMARYThyroid pathology is rarely involved in the pathogenesis of sudden death in young people. We report here the cases of two young patients with decreased levels of thyroid hormones whose death was caused by an increased thrombotic status, with venous thrombosis and pulmonary thromboembolism. In both cases the thyroid pathology was not considered as the underlying cause of death as the association between this condition and venous thrombosis is still debatable. However its presence may be considered a circumstantial factor, which could increase the severity of the disease and subsequently the lethality rate in pulmonary thromboembolism. An increased awareness for hypothyroidism or subclinical hypothyroidism in clinical practice may lead to a decrease in mortality secondary to thromboembolic disease. Also, increased awareness for thyroid pathology during forensic autopsy in sudden deaths may lead to potentially significant results, that could explain some of the sudden death with an unknown cause, and decrease the number of the so called blank autopsies. Arch Endocrinol Metab. 2015;59(4):355-8

The purpose of this article is to analyze the usefulness of fibronectin and P-selectin in detecting the vitality of the wounds in everyday legal medicine practice, in uncontrolled conditions, and to see whether they can be used for estimating the age of the lesions. We used 17 cases with a short interval from the production of the wounds to death. On the integuments studied from the cases selected in the interest group, fibronectin (FbN) was positive at the dermis-epidermis junction relatively frequently, in the superficial dermis focally and in the deep dermis peri-axially (sudoriparous glands, sebaceous glands) with a sometimes marked reaction; it was also interstitially positive around hemorrhagic areas in the hypodermic conjunctive and adipose tissue. P-selectin (CD-62P) was positive variably and focally in the extracellular matrix and the vessels, with a low intensity and a fibrillar pattern. The P-selectin expression in the extracellular matrix was equal to the P-selectin expression in the capillaries.Between the expression Fb and CD-62-P and the postmortem interval there was no correlation.The fibroblasts in the extracellular matrix showed variable positivity. For forensic practice the usefulness of fibronectin and P-selectin is debatable. If they are very useful in detecting the vitality of the wound, for estimating the age there is a need for a much larger scale study, that must take into consideration factors like CPR, individual pathologies, and so on.The two used antibodies have a moderate sensitivity and low specificity, and as such they have to always be correlated with the Perls staining, and in a histopathological context only.

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Determining the chronological age by assessing only the presence of ossification centres and the degree of epiphyseal union observed in the left hand-wrist X-rays could lead to important chronological age underestimation or overestimation. This article presents 4 such cases, emphasizing the importance of assessing the morphology of hand bone elements in addition to their presence in order to increase the accuracy of the chronological age evaluation.