The immunohistochemical study of VEGF for postmortem diagnosis of early myocardial infarction

With the use of immuno histochemical SABC VEGF staining and Image Quantification Analysis as well as Statistics Process System,the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) was firstly studied in 61hearts from autopsy for the purpose of postmortem diagnosis of early myocardial infarction The results revealed that all 24 cases of confirmed infarcts had positive staining of VEGF on membranes of myocardial cell and vascular endothelia. Positive expression of VEGF in cytoplasm of myocardial cells were found in some cases,especially at the border zone of infarction Among 21 cases with suspect caridac infarction,VEGF was strongly positive in 19 cases and weak positive in 2 cases,whereas only mild positive staining of VEGF in myocardial cells and in vascular endothelium in one case of normal conerol group.The rest cases were negative Positive indexc (Pl) of normal hearts was 0 30±0 10 which was significantly lower than that of confirmed infarcts and suspect infarcts(12 46±3 26 and 11 70±3 56 respectively, P 0 01).No significant difference between PI of infarcts and of suspect infarcts was found( P 0 05) This finding suggests that SABC VEGF method provides an objective morphologic evidence for the postmortem diagnosis of sudden cardiac death caused by early myocardial infarction