title: Individual Case Analysis of Postmortem Interval Time on Brain Tissue Preservation.
abstract: At autopsy, the time that has elapsed since the time of death is routinely documented and noted as the postmortem interval (PMI). The PMI of human tissue samples is a parameter often reported in research studies and comparable PMI is preferred when comparing different populations, i.e., disease versus control patients. In theory, a short PMI may alleviate non-experimental protein denaturation, enzyme activity, and other chemical changes such as the pH, which could affect protein and nucleic acid integrity. Previous studies have compared PMI en masse by looking at many different individual cases each with one unique PMI, which may be affected by individual variance. To overcome this obstacle, in this study human hippocampal segments from the same individuals were sampled at different time points after autopsy creating a series of PMIs for each case. Frozen and fixed tissue was then examined by Western blot, RT-PCR, and immunohistochemistry to evaluate the effect of extended PMI on proteins, nucleic acids, and tissue morphology. In our results, immunostaining profiles for most proteins remained unchanged even after PMI of over 50 h, yet by Western blot distinctive degradation patterns were observed in different protein species. Finally, RNA integrity was lower after extended PMI; however, RNA preservation was variable among cases suggesting antemortem factors may play a larger role than PMI in protein and nucleic acid integrity.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences and School of Biomedical Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jeffrey A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Blair
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.|Department of Neurology, The Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Chunyu
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Damarys
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hernandez
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Sandra L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Siedlak
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Mark S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Rodgers
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Rojan K
authors.initials: RK
authors.lastname: Achar
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Lara M
authors.initials: LM
authors.lastname: Fahmy
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Sandy L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Torres
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Robert B
authors.initials: RB
authors.lastname: Petersen
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Xiongwei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences and School of Biomedical Sciences, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Gemma
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Casadesus
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America.
authors.forename: Hyoung-Gon
authors.initials: HG
authors.lastname: Lee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001344:Autopsy; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism / Q000473:pathology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009419:Nerve Tissue Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D010766:Phosphorylation; D011180:Postmortem Changes; D016875:tau Proteins / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D009419:Nerve Tissue Proteins; D016875:tau Proteins