Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
6555241 | Legal Medicine | 2018 | 4 Pages |
Abstract
A substantial challenge faced by forensic medicine is determining the postmortem interval (PMI) of skeletonized remains. Currently, the luminol method is of limited forensic usefulness, since it uses qualitative and subjective methods to estimate PMI by the naked eye assessing the degree of chemiluminescence (CL) emitted by bone remains, a technique which is not sensitive enough to distinguish between historical or forensically significant time intervals. The aim of the present study was to use a direct and accurate measurement of the CL by luminol technique in relative light units (RLU) using a luminometer to establish this method as a possible complementary and low cost tool for the determination of the PMI for distinguishing between remains of medical-legal (<20â¯years) and historical (â¥20â¯years) interest in 102 femur remains with a range of PMI between 15 and 64â¯years. The results suggest that, under favorable conditions, the luminol technique can detect haemoglobin in the bone in a PMI range of 0-65â¯years, finding significant differences in the CL intensity among samples with PMIâ¯<â¯20â¯years and PMIâ¯â¥â¯20â¯years. In addition, the intensities of CL measured at 10â¯s, 15â¯s and 20â¯s after reaction with luminol show a statistically significant inverse relationship with PMI in the bone studied, following a decreasing logarithmic model. The conclusion is that this quantitative, objective and contrastable technique could be very useful for determining the PMI in bone remains, since it allows a good degree of precision and eliminates the subjectivity introduced by qualitative techniques.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Chemistry
Analytical Chemistry
Authors
Jesús Sarabia, Cristina Pérez-MartÃnez, Juan Pedro Hernández del Rincón, Aurelio Luna,