The first laboratory-confirmed Italian COVID-19 case was identified in Lombardy on 21 February 2020, in a 38-year-old man who had no history of possible contact with positive cases in Italy or abroad. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) rapidly spread worldwide, and the World Health Organization (WHO) declared pandemic status in March 2020. These data suggest that cadaveric blood may be a suitable substrate for the assessment of SARS-CoV-2 infection moreover, they extend the observations of sporadic cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in North Italy prior to the first confirmed cases.Īt the end of December 2019, the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causing serious pneumonia was identified in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China ( Jin et al., 2020). The detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA resulted in positive only in the blood and lung tissues of such cases. The fifth subject (who died in December 2019) resulted positive for the ELISA test. Three results were weakly positive for IgM while only one showed strong reactivity for IgG antibodies. Five cases resulted in positives at the serological screening for anti-SARS-CoV-2. The presence of anti-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (anti-SARS-CoV-2) antibodies was searched by lateral flow immunochromatographic assay (LFIA) and ELISA tests and the SARS-CoV-2 RNA was tested in blood and available lung tissues by real-time PCR (RT-PCR) and droplet digital PCR (ddPCR). In this study, we analyzed blood samples obtained from 169 cadavers subjected to an autopsy from 1 October 2019 to 27 March 2020.
2Department of Biomedical Sciences for Health, Institute of Forensic Medicine, University of Milan, Milan, Italy.
1Department of Biomedical and Clinical Sciences, University of Milan, Milan, Italy.Alessia Lai 1 * †, Stefano Tambuzzi 2 †, Annalisa Bergna 1, Alessio Battistini 2, Carla Della Ventura 1, Massimo Galli 1, Riccardo Zoja 2, Gianguglielmo Zehender 1 and Cristina Cattaneo 2
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