The Allegheny County Health Department is running tests on samples from a Butler County woman who died Sept. 10 with flu-like symptoms to try to determine whether she had H1N1 flu.

As of 3 p.m. yesterday, there have been no confirmed H1N1-related deaths in Western Pennsylvania, according to statistics posted on the Pennsylvania Department of Health Web site. There have been 10 in the state, all of them in Eastern Pennsylvania, including seven in Philadelphia County.

The tests in the county health department laboratory were arranged by former Allegheny County Coroner Cyril Wecht, who performed a private autopsy on the woman Sunday. Butler County does not have its own health department.

She was identified as Deborah Spangler of Renfrew. Dr. Wecht said she was 45 years old, married with two adult children.

"As I have been given information from her physician and the family, she had flu-like symptoms for close to a week that kept getting increasingly worse," Dr. Wecht said.

"She was bothered mostly by aches and pains and increasing weakness and generalized lassitude, and these became increasingly worse to the point where she was even having difficulty walking when they took her to a doctor Thursday [Sept. 10] morning."

She was taken around 6 p.m. that evening to Butler Memorial Hospital. Dr. Wecht said he believes she had died by the time she arrived at the emergency room.

Dr. Wecht said he had "not had a case like this this year" involving someone in apparent good health and without underlying conditions that might predispose the patient to a life-threatening infection.

Spokesman Guillermo Cole said the Health Department didn't know when the laboratory tests would be ready.

The tests involve growing cultures of viruses in the department laboratory. "It can take a few days to get a definitive result -- if one can be obtained," Mr. Cole said. "It can't be guaranteed. ... We may get a positive for influenza but not be able to say it's the H1N1 strain."

According to the state Health Department Web site yesterday, only 12 cases of swine flu had been confirmed in Butler County. Allegheny County had 175 confirmed cases.