Novel approach to determine post-mortem interval from ATPase activity

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• ATPase
• time since death
• forensic medicine
• post-mortem interval
• enzyme activity