| Autor: |
Cristoforo Pomara, Francesco Sessa, Domenico Galante, Lorenzo Pace, Antonio Fasanella, Nunzio Di Nunno, Massimiliano Esposito, Monica Salerno |
| Jazyk: |
angličtina |
| Rok vydání: |
2021 |
| Předmět: |
|
| Zdroj: |
Diagnostics, Vol 11, Iss 10, p 1913 (2021) |
| Druh dokumentu: |
article |
| ISSN: |
2075-4418 |
| DOI: |
10.3390/diagnostics11101913 |
| Popis: |
To date, little is known regarding the transmission risks of SARS-CoV-2 infection for subjects involved in handling, transporting, and examining deceased persons with known or suspected COVID-19 positivity at the time of death. This experimental study aims to define if and/or how long SARS-CoV-2 persists with replication capacity in the tissues of individuals who died with/from COVID-19, thereby generating infectious hazards. Sixteen patients who died with/from COVID-19 who underwent autopsy between April 2020 and April 2021 were included in this study. Based on PMI, all samples were subdivided into two groups: ‘short PMI’ group (eight subjects who were autopsied between 12 to 72 h after death); ‘long PMI’ (eight subjects who were autopsied between 24 to 78 days after death). All patients tested positive for RT-PCR at nasopharyngeal swab both before death and on samples collected during post-mortem investigation. Moreover, a lung specimen was collected and frozen at −80 °C in order to perform viral culture. The result was defined based on the cytopathic effect (subjective reading) combined with the positivity of the RT-PCR test (objective reading) in the supernatant. Only in one sample (PMI 12 h), virus vitality was demonstrated. This study, supported by a literature review, suggests that the risk of cadaveric infection in cases of a person who died from/with COVID-19 is extremely low in the first hours after death, becoming null after 12 h after death, confirming the World Health Organization (WHO) assumed in March 2020 and suggesting that the corpse of a subject who died from/with COVID-19 should be generally considered not infectious. |
| Databáze: |
Directory of Open Access Journals |
| Externí odkaz: |
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