Organ weights in healthy and apparently healthy Danish infants

Area of Science:

• Human biology
• Forensic pathology
• Pediatric research

Background:

• Accurate organ weight data is crucial for pediatric health assessments.
• Understanding organ growth patterns in infants informs developmental milestones.
• Forensic autopsies provide a unique dataset for studying infant organ development.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish reference ranges for infant organ weights.
• To investigate the relationship between organ weights and infant age, body weight, and length.
• To identify potential sex-based or health-status-based differences in infant organ weights.

Main Methods:

• Collected organ weight data (brain, heart, liver, kidneys, spleen, lungs, thymus) from 222 Danish infant forensic autopsies.
• Analyzed data for 222 healthy or apparently healthy infants (1 week to 0.99 year).
• Assessed correlations between individual organ weights, sum of organ weights, and age, body weight, and body length.

Main Results:

• No significant differences in organ weights were found between males and females.
• No significant differences were observed between healthy and apparently healthy infants.
• All individual organ weights showed a significant positive correlation with age, body weight, and body length.
• Brain weight exhibited the strongest correlation, while thymus weight showed the least.

Conclusions:

• Infant organ weights are strongly influenced by growth parameters (age, body weight, length).
• Established correlations provide valuable reference data for pediatric studies.
• Findings support the use of organ weight data in forensic and developmental pediatric contexts.