Colchicine poisoning can occur not only by taking dosage form but also by ingesting a plant containing colchicine. A 39-year-old man presented to the emergency room with nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea 9 hours after ingestion of wild garlic. Symptoms attributed to food poisoning, and he received supportive cares and discharged. However, he was admitted to the hospital because of severe gastrointestinal presentations 4 hours later. He received treatments based on the diagnosis of acute gastroenteritis. The patient was in a fair condition during 30 hours of hospitalization until he suddenly developed respiratory distress and unfortunately died with cardiopulmonary arrest. The deceased body referred to our legal medicine center for determining cause of death and investigating possible medical staff malpractices. Postmortem examination, autopsy, macropathology and micropathology study, and postmortem toxicological analysis were performed. All results were submitted to the medical committee office for decision. The unknown cause of death was disclosed after determination of colchicine in the plant and botanical identification as Colchicum persicum. The committee determined the most probable cause of death as acute cardiopulmonary complications induced by colchicine poisoning and the manner of death as accidental. The medical staff was acquitted of the malpractice.

No abstract

BackgroundThyroid cancer (TC) is known to be the most common endocrine malignancy with an incidence rate which has increased by 2.3-fold over the past 30 years. Approximately, 30% of the thyroid fine-needle aspiration biopsy (FNAB) outcomes are indecisive. Moreover, researchers recognized multiple differentially expressed microRNAs (miRNAs) as candidate diagnostic markers for thyroid nodules. The purpose of this study was to identify thyroid tumor-associated miRNAs in FNAB with the capacity to be developed as unique biomarkers.Materials and methodsAccording to the study design, a quantitative real time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was applied to evaluate the expression levels of nine miRNAs (Let7, miR-34a, miR-146b, miR-221, miR-151, miR-155, miR-181b, miR-222 and miR-375) among 224 FNA samples as the training set.ResultsThe findings of this study revealed that miR-181b and miR-146b are the best predictors to diagnose benign thyroid FNA samples from malignant samples. However, the remaining miRNAs were co-expressed and had no significant effect on the predictor model. On the other hand, sensitivity and specificity of miR-181b and miR-146b were reported at 83.0%–83.0% and 83.0%–66.0%, respectively.ConclusionsAccording to the results of this study, miR-146b and miR-181b might be considered as adjunct markers contributing to thyroid FNAB in tumor types. In addition, miR-146b and miR-181b were recognized as biomarkers for discriminating benign thyroid nodules from malignant ones. It is suggested that further prospective clinical trials be conducted to evaluate the accuracy of such findings in a larger cohort and determine the clinical uses.