TY - JOUR
T1 - Ethanol Determination in Post-Mortem Samples
T2 - Correlation between Blood and Vitreous Humor Concentration
AU - Savini, Fabio
AU - Tartaglia, Angela
AU - Coccia, Ludovica
AU - Palestini, Danilo
AU - D'Ovidio, Cristian
AU - Grazia, Ugo De
AU - Merone, Giuseppe Maria
AU - Bassotti, Elisa
AU - Locatelli, Marcello
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 MDPI AG. All rights reserved.
Copyright:
Copyright 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/6
Y1 - 2020/6
N2 - Ethanol (ethylic alcohol) represents the most commonly used drug worldwide and is often involved in clinical and forensic toxicology. Based on several reports, excessive alcohol consumption is the main contributing factor in traffic accidents, drownings, suicides, and other crimes. For these reasons, it becomes essential to analyze the alcohol concentration during autopsy. Although blood is usually used for alcohol analysis in post-mortem cases, it could suffer alterations, putrefaction, and microbial contaminations. As an alternative to whole blood, vitreous humor has been successfully used in medico-legal studies. In this work, post-mortem specimens were analyzed for ethanol determination. The analysis of blood and vitreous humor were carried-out using gas chromatography-flame ionized detector (GC-FID) with a total run time of 6 min. The method was validated in terms of limit of detection, limit of quantification, dynamic range, sensibility, recovery, precision and trueness. A linear regression analysis indicated a coeffcient of determination (R2) of 0.9981. The study confirmed no statistically differences between alcohol concentration in blood and vitreous humor, leading vitreous humor as an excellent matrix that could be used as an alternative to whole blood in toxicological analysis in cases where blood is not available.
AB - Ethanol (ethylic alcohol) represents the most commonly used drug worldwide and is often involved in clinical and forensic toxicology. Based on several reports, excessive alcohol consumption is the main contributing factor in traffic accidents, drownings, suicides, and other crimes. For these reasons, it becomes essential to analyze the alcohol concentration during autopsy. Although blood is usually used for alcohol analysis in post-mortem cases, it could suffer alterations, putrefaction, and microbial contaminations. As an alternative to whole blood, vitreous humor has been successfully used in medico-legal studies. In this work, post-mortem specimens were analyzed for ethanol determination. The analysis of blood and vitreous humor were carried-out using gas chromatography-flame ionized detector (GC-FID) with a total run time of 6 min. The method was validated in terms of limit of detection, limit of quantification, dynamic range, sensibility, recovery, precision and trueness. A linear regression analysis indicated a coeffcient of determination (R2) of 0.9981. The study confirmed no statistically differences between alcohol concentration in blood and vitreous humor, leading vitreous humor as an excellent matrix that could be used as an alternative to whole blood in toxicological analysis in cases where blood is not available.
KW - Blood
KW - Ethanol
KW - Gc-fid
KW - Post-mortem analysis
KW - Specimens correlation
KW - Vitreous humor
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U2 - 10.3390/molecules25122724
DO - 10.3390/molecules25122724
M3 - Article
C2 - 32545471
AN - SCOPUS:85086686016
VL - 25
JO - Molecules
JF - Molecules
SN - 1420-3049
IS - 12
M1 - 2724
ER -