Estimation of age from sclerotic glomeruli

Received 18 December 2008; received in revised form 3 November 2009; accepted 21 December 2009. published online 28 January 2010.

Abstract

Glomerular sclerosis is one of the age-related causes of nephron damage. Histological studies of cadaver kidneys in several ethnic groups have shown that there is a consistent relationship between the percentage of sclerotic glomeruli (PSG) and age. However, no study regarding this relationship in the Japanese population has been reported to date. Here, we investigated such relationship in 150 Japanese cadavers that were selected regardless of clinical history. The straight line regression was estimated as follows: Age=23.3+1.36×APSG (APSG: arcsine-transformed PSG). The R2 value of the regression line was 0.598.

The diagnostic test with the PSG value (cutoff=0.6%) for the age stratum (cutoff=33 years old) showed very high sensitivity (100%) and specificity (97.6%). From the results, PSG appears to be useful for the estimation of a cadaver's age in the Japanese population.

Keywords: Age estimation, Sclerotic glomeruli, Forensic pathology, Statistical analysis

a Department of Legal Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, Inohana 1-8-1 Chu-o-ku, Chiba, Japan

b Department of Public Health, Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba University, Inohana 1-8-1 Chu-o-ku, Chiba, Japan

Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 432262078.

PII: S0379-0738(10)00002-2

doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2009.12.062

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