Clinicopathologic and Immunohistochemical Findings from Autopsy of Patient with COVID-19, Japan
Takuya Adachi, Ja‐Mun Chong, Noriko Nakajima, Masahiro Sano, Jun Yamazaki, Ippei Miyamoto, Haruka Nishioka, Hidetaka Akita, Yuko Sato, Michiyo Kataoka, Harutaka Katano, Minoru Tobiume, Tsuyoshi Sekizuka, Kentaro Itokawa, Makoto Kuroda, Tadaki Suzuki
Abstract
C oronavirus disease (COVID-19), which was first reported in December 2019 in Wuhan, China, has been spreading rapidly and on a global scale. The causative virus is severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (1). The World Health Organization declared the outbreak of COVID-19 to be pandemic on March 11, 2020, and had reported 693,282 laboratory-confirmed cases and 33,106 deaths globally as of March 30 (2). Numerous studies of the clinical features of COVID-19 and the virologic characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 have been conducted in China to date Postmortem examination will provide valuable information required to elucidate the pathogenesis of COVID-19; however, only 2 studies have been published on COVID-19 pathology thus far (5,6). Further, the distribution of SARS-CoV-2 in a patient and identification of which cells are infected by SARS-CoV-2 have yet to be reported.