Novel approach to determine post-mortem interval from ATPase activity
A recurring problem in forensic medicine is the need to fix the time of death within the limits of probability. Errors in overestimating and underestimating the post-mortem interval based on body cooling is common. Post-mortem biochemistry has become a potent additional procedure in forensic death investigation. However, in our experiment, to determine the post-mortem interval we investigated the ATPase activity. The investigation was performed on the liver tissue of 25 corpses (21 men and four women) of age ranging between 40–60 years. The study of ATPase enzymatic activity shows that there is a considerable drop in the levels of ATPase activity with increasing post-mortem interval up to 24 h and this is one of the most reliable methods for estimating time of death.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Illinois, and accounts for nearly 25% of all deaths in the US. Rapid lab testing for troponin as a biochemical marker for myocardial infarction (MI) is Emergency medicine standard of care, with goal for turnaround time (TAT) to results within 60 minutes. Our system …