Authors: Berezowska, Sabina; Lefort, Karine; Ioannidou, Kalliopi; Ndiaye, Daba-Rokhya; Maison, Damien; Petrovas, Constantinos; Rotman, Samuel; Piazzon, Nathalie; Milowich, Dina; Sala, Nathalie; Tsai, Chun-Yi; Multone, Eleonore; Bochud, Pierre-Yves; Oddo, Mauro; Bisig, Bettina; de Leval, Laurence
Online: https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4418/11/8/1357
Issue: Diagnostics (Basel). 2021 Jul 28;11(8):1357.
Abstract
We report postmortem cardio-pulmonary findings including detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in formalin-fixed paraffin embedded tissue in 12 patients with COVID-19. The 5 women and 7 men (median age: 73 years; range 35–96) died 6–38 days after onset of symptoms (median: 14.5 days). Eight patients received mechanical ventilation. Ten patients showed diffuse alveolar damage (DAD), 7 as exudative and 3 as proliferative/organizing DAD. One case presented as acute fibrinous and organizing pneumonia. Seven patients (58%) had acute bronchopneumonia, 1/7 without associated DAD and 1/7 with aspergillosis and necrotic bronchitis. Microthrombi were present in 5 patients, only in exudative DAD. Reverse transcriptase quantitative PCR detected high virus amounts in 6 patients (50%) with exudative DAD and symptom-duration ≤14 days, supported by immunohistochemistry and in-situ RNA hybridization (RNAscope). The 6 patients with low viral copy levels were symptomatic for ≥15 days, comprising all cases with organizing DAD, the patient without DAD and one exudative DAD. We show the high prevalence of DAD as a reaction pattern in COVID-19, the high number of overlying acute bronchopneumonia, and high-level pulmonary virus detection limited to patients who died ≤2 weeks after onset of symptoms, correlating with exudative phase of DAD.
