The significance of hemosiderin deposition in the lungs and organs of the mononucleated macrophage resorption system in infants and children

Abstract

Hemosiderin deposition is not often recognized on routine examination with hematoxylinand eosin staining; however, iron stains may be helpful in the evaluation ofhemosiderin deposition in infant autopsies. This report describes the data obtainedfrom autopsy of 86 infants and children whose deaths were investigated at theForensic Medicine Council Bursa Morgue Department from January 2000 to January2003. A histochemical technique was used to identify hemosiderin in lung, liverand spleen specimens, which was correlated with other descriptive variables suchas the reported cause of death, postmortem interval, trauma history, gender, andage. There was a weakly positive but significant correlation between lung and liverhemosiderin scores (Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, rho=0.348, p=0.001);i.e., given an increase in lung hemosiderin scores, an increase in liver hemosiderinscores was also observed. Similarly, a marked positive correlation between spleenand liver hemosiderin scores (Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient, rho=0.335,p=0.002) was observed. The probability of spleen hemosiderin-positive cases belongingto the age group under 6 months was found to be 4.3 times greater than thosewho were hemosiderin-negative (95% confidence interval, 1.6-11.8). After the majordifferential diagnoses were ruled out, this study demonstrated, that depending onthe statistically assessed morphometric grounds, the presence of hemosiderin depositsin the liver and spleen were significantly higher in the age group under 6 months.