TY  - JOUR
A1  - Lehmann-Leo, Carl Daniel
A1  - Ramsthaler, Frank
A1  - Birngruber, Christoph Gerhard
A1  - Verhoff, Marcel A.
T1  - Assessment of renal glomerulosclerosis and thickness of the carotid intima-media complex as a means of age estimation in Western European bodies
T2  - International journal of legal medicine
N2  - Introduction: The estimation of age-at-death of unidentified cadavers is a central aspect of the identification process. With increasing age, the incidence of glomerulosclerosis and the thickness of the carotid wall have been observed to also increase. This correlation has been demonstrated in various international histological studies. The aim of our study was to assess whether these correlations also apply to a Western European population.
Methodology: In this retrospective observational study, kidney and common carotid artery samples from 216 cases autopsied at the Institute of Legal Medicine at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen, Germany, were examined. Only cases with available tissue samples from both body sides were included. Exclusion criteria were poor sample quality and an age younger than 21 years. After histological processing, the tissue samples were assessed and digitally evaluated. Regression and classification analyses were used to investigate the correlation between age-at-death and intima-media thickness and age-at-death and the incidence of renal glomerular sclerosis.
Results: Of the 216 autopsy cases, 183 were included for evaluation. Analysis of the carotid artery segments showed a strong correlation (Pearson correlation coefficient r = 0.887) between the intima-media-complex thickness and chronological age. Classification of the glomerulosclerotic incidence showed a correlation of 37.7–43.1% with the predicted age group.
Discussion: Both the intima-media thickness and the proportion of sclerotic glomeruli can be used to estimate age in Western European cadavers. On the basis of these results, both methods are suited to supplement other already established methods for age-at-death estimation in the identification of an unknown cadaver.
KW  - Forensic pathology
KW  - Age estimation
KW  - Biological profile
KW  - Sclerotic glomeruli
KW  - Glomerulosclerosis
KW  - Intimal-medial thickness
Y1  - 2021
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/69551
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-695519
SN  - 1437-1596
SN  - 0937-9827
N1  - Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL.
VL  - 136
IS  - 3
SP  - 753
EP  - 763
PB  - Springer ; HeinOnline
CY  - Berlin ; Heidelberg ; Getzville, NY
ER  -