The Importance of Tenascin and Ubiquitin in Estimation of Wound Age

Abstract

Human wound age determination is of prime importance in forensic sciences. Ubiquitin is a small protein required for ATP-dependent, nonlysosomal intracellular protein degradation, which eliminates most of the intracellular defective proteins. Tenascin is an extracellular matrix glycoprotein. The aim of this study was to determine the importance of ubiquitin and tenascin in wound age. Ubiquitin and tenascin were immunohistochemically applied on formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissues of 170 wound biopsies taken from 89 autopsy cases with known wound age. Pearson correlation analysis was performed for statistical analysis. The mean age was 39.44 years. Tenascin was negative in 123 cases (72.4%) in all series, and it was negative in 98.3% in cases with wound age under 24 hours. It was positive in 91.8% in cases with wound age over 24 hours. Mean number of cells which expressed ubiquitin was 10.56%, while it was 4.25% in cases with wound age under 24 hours, and it was 26.14% in cases with wound age over 24 hours. The correlation analysis showed that both tenascin and ubiquitin were positively correlated with wound age. But in cases with wound age over 40 days, tenascin was found to be negative and ubiquitin was still expressed in fibroblasts. We concluded that tenascin and ubiquitin together was useful in determining wound age semiquantitatively.