Human brain samples were collected from 46 autopsy cases, including 23 fatal heat stroke cases and 23 age-matched controls. Nine candidate reference genes (PES1, POLR2A, IPO8, HMBS, SDHA, GAPDH, UBC, B2M, ACTB) were evaluated in the cerebral cortex of 10 forensic autopsy cases (5 heat stroke and 5 controls), using the geNorm module in qBaseplus software. SDHA, POLR2A, IPO8 and HMBS were identified as the most stable reference genes. Using these validated reference genes, mRNA expressions of Matr...