Ethanol Determination in Post-Mortem Samples: Correlation between Blood and Vitreous Humor Concentration

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...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2020-06, Vol.25 (12), p.2724
Main Authors: Savini, Fabio, Tartaglia, Angela, Coccia, Ludovica, Palestini, Danilo, D'Ovidio, Cristian, de Grazia, Ugo, Merone, Giuseppe Maria, Bassotti, Elisa, Locatelli, Marcello
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acids
Alcohol
Alcohols
Autopsies
Autopsy - methods
Blood
Blood levels
Body Fluids - chemistry
Chromatography, Gas - methods
Enzymes
Ethanol
Ethanol - analysis
Ethanol - blood
Fluorides
Forensic science
Forensic toxicology
Forensic Toxicology - methods
Gas chromatography
GC-FID
Humans
Laboratories
Microbial contamination
Microorganisms
post-mortem analysis
Postmortem Changes
Putrefaction
Regression analysis
Retention
specimens correlation
Statistical methods
Toxicology
Traffic accidents
Traffic accidents & safety
Vitreous Body - chemistry
Vitreous humor
Vitreous humour
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Summary: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 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, 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 coefficient of determination (R ) 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.
ISSN:1420-3049
1420-3049
DOI:10.3390/molecules25122724