The relationship between adrenal gland morphometric changes and postmortem interval in rats: A stereological study

The importance of determining time of death is crucial to forensic cases. The ability to use adrenal gland volume changes and adrenal medulla chromaffin cell counts to obtain the postmortem interval was examined in this study. A total of 15 rats were sacrificed by cervical dislocation and divided into three groups. The left adrenal glands were quickly excised in the first group at Oh, in the second group at 12 h and in the third group at 24 h. Subsequently, the samples were fixed in 10% formalin solution and embedded in paraffin according to standard procedures. Ten to fifteen sections were obtained from each left adrenal gland by taking 30 mu m thick sections; then, the sections were stained with hematoxylin-eosin (HE). The adrenal cortex and medullar volumes were calculated by Cavalieri's principle, which is a stereological method. The adrenal medullary chromaffin cell count was evaluated by the optical fractionator method. The total volume of the adrenal gland was determined as 4.82 +/- 1 mm(3) at Oh, 6.32 +/- 0.28 mm(3) at 12 h and 8.35 +/- 1.73 mm(3) at 24 h. Increases in the adrenal cortex, adrenal medulla and the total volume of the adrenal gland at 12 and 24 h postmortem compared with at Oh were statistically significant (p <0.05). The difference between the groups in terms of the total number chromaffin cells was statistically significant (p <0.05). In this preliminary study, we evaluated the total volume of the adrenal gland and the number of chromaffin cells of the adrenal medulla. We concluded that these parameters could be used reliably in determining the postmortem interval. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.