Histo-pathological findings and their relationship with age, gender and toxin amounts in paraquat intoxication

Objective: acute paraquat (pq) poisoning which is taken either to commit suicide or by mistake has become a social concern worldwide. the present study was conducted to determine the histo-pathological findings in deceased pq poisoning patients and evaluate their relationship with age, gender, amounts of ingested pq, time from ingestion to admission. methodology: forty-two patients of pq poisoning with positive urinary dithionate test were included in the study. deceased patients underwent autopsy and their histo-pathological findings were examined. results: the mean age of men and women were 29.06 ±10.6 and 16.66 ± 4.6 years respectively. hepatocellular damage (60%), tubular nephritis (60%) and pulmonary edema (50%) were the main pathological lesions. logistic regression analyses identified the following significant predictors for poisoning-related liver lesions: age more than 20 years [odds ratio (or), 13.75; 95% confidence interval (ci), 1.48 – 127.47], and ingested paraquat amounts more than 30 mg /kg (or, 16; 95% ci, 1.32 – 194.62). there was also a significant correlation between liver lesions and age (correlation coefficient, 0.50; p value, 0.024); gender (correlation coefficient, 0.57; p value, 0.008); amount of ingested pq (correlation coefficient, 0.55; p value, 0.012). there were no correlations between lung and kidney histopathological lesions with different variables. conclusion: age, amount of ingested pq, and gender are important parameters which may correlate with histopathological liver lesions in deceased pq poisoning patients.